Fusion Students has exchanged on a deal to acquire Windsor House for a reported £5 million from a client of Aberdeen Asset Management. The city centre office block will be demolished, and a new 100,000 sq ft state of the art student accommodation block will be built. CBRE is advising Fusion Students on the transaction.
The new scheme will house 322 boutique hotel-style rooms, a gymnasium, game zone and private student lounge. Fusion Students already offers bespoke accommodation in Bristol and Hatfield where they accommodate almost 1,000 students, while work continues on similar student developments in Newcastle and Nottingham.
Cardiff hosts approximately 35,000 students, and the addition of purpose built student accommodation such as Windsor House will ease the pressure on housing demand elsewhere in the city, taking the strain from traditional shared housing in the Roath and Cathays areas of the city and freeing up existing housing for families and professionals.
James Trant, Associate Director at CBRE, comments:
“The purchase of Windsor House is a demonstration of the strength of appetite for regional development in the student accommodation sector. Towns and cities such as Cardiff, with a structural undersupply of student accommodation, can expect to see further multi-million pound investments.”
Warren Rosenberg, Co-Founder of Fusion Students, explains:
“Student accommodation is a vibrant and emerging market and Fusion Students aims to be in the vanguard regarding quantity and quality. We aim to give students more than a bed in a box room while they are studying at university. We create a real home from home environment, living spaces that are practical and competitively priced but boasting a very high spec and crammed full of luxuries.”
Windsor House in Windsor Lane in the east of the city is ideally placed being within a short walk of the University’s main faculty buildings, less than half a mile from three train stations, Queen Street, Cathays and Central, and in the heart of the vibrant commercial and entertainment centres.
Fusion Students were advised by CBRE.