Student accommodation
Asset manager
The asset manager runs a building or a property portfolio on the investor's behalf: it sets the business plan, approves budgets and capital spending, oversees the operator and proposes when to refurbish, refinance or sell. It looks at the residence as an investment, not as a home.
Also known asasset management · real estate asset manager · gestor de activos
What is and is not its job
In student accommodation the chain usually has three links. The investor, which may be a fund, an insurer or a Spanish REIT (socimi), puts in the capital. The asset manager represents it: it turns the investor's goals into a plan for each building, reviews the accounts the operator sends and prepares the big decisions, such as refurnishing a floor or turning double rooms into singles. The PBSA operator and the property manager carry them out. In the United Kingdom the term is used this way across commercial property, and the student sector inherited it; in Spain it is used mainly by funds and socimis, almost always in English. Its yardstick is the yield, which is why it asks for data that can be compared between buildings: occupancy, costs, incidents, satisfaction.
| Role | The question it asks |
|---|---|
| Investor | Does this building fit what I want to hold? |
| Asset manager | Is it performing as its plan said, and what has to change so that it does? |
| Operator and property manager | Is everything working today, and are the people who live here happy? |
Worth knowing
It is not engineering asset management. In maintenance, "asset management" means looking after a building's equipment over its whole life, with its own standard (ISO 55001), and it overlaps with preventive maintenance. In property investment, the asset manager is whoever answers to the owner for the building's financial result.
Sources
Related terms
- PBSA operatorA PBSA operator is the company that runs a private student residence day to day: it markets the beds, signs up the residents, manages reception, maintenance and cleaning and organises life in the building. It answers for the building's results to its owner, which is often a different company.
- Property managerA property manager is the person or firm that runs a building day to day on its owner's behalf: collecting rents, hiring and overseeing maintenance and suppliers, looking after whoever lives there and reporting back every month. In a student residence, that role usually falls to the operator.
- YieldThe yield of a property is the ratio between the annual rent it produces and what it is worth. It is used to compare buildings with each other and with other investments, and to value a purchase: the safer the income looks, the lower the yield a buyer will accept.