Greystar announced it was acquiring Education Realty Trust Greystar CEO Bob Faith

The new fund that Greystar launched for student housing

We expect to continue to grow it. We'll be focused on adding new assets, both on-campus and off-campus. More acquisitions are a possibility as is development.We're a very large investor in student housing outside of the US and we expect this fund to accelerate our US activities in this space. We're a dominant player in the multifamily sector so this new fund is meant to help bring our student housing business up to scale, similar to our multifamily focus.

Off-campus versus on-campus student housing

A lot of EdR's growth has been from its on-campus development and partnerships with universities. We think that represents a huge opportunity going forward. But there's also the continued need for off-campus, purpose-built student housing and I would expect us to continue that as well.

The partnership with Blackstone

Greystar Student Housing Growth and Income Fund will be focused primarily on on-campus and close-to-campus housing. The deal with Blackstone was an opportunity to take some other really great assets at some great universities and capitalize them differently. They were all off-campus properties and just a little different than the cash-profile of our on-campus and close-to-campus assets.

Student housing's role as a defensive stock

It is certainly something that made this acquisition even more exciting. These are low-leverage strategies so it introduces a safety factor. And the fact that student housing is not as volatile as other commercial real estate asset classes and performs pretty well in a downturn is definitely something that not just us but other capital providers around the globe find compelling.