ARTISAN Sells Student Housing Community, The Standard St. Louis

ARTISAN Capital Group ("ACG") is pleased to announce the sale of The Standard, a 465-bed Class-A student housing community that's pedestrian to St. Louis University. ACG acquired the 100% occupied and pre-leased property in February 2020 through a joint venture partnership with a closed-end private equity fund investor.

ACG's successful execution of the operational turnaround strategy created an excellent investment outcome for the partnership. ACG maintained The Standard's occupancy at 100% for the life of the hold while growing NOI >36% over an 18-month period. The project delivered a >40% IRR.

"The sale of The Standard strongly supports our investment thesis that value-add returns can be achieved on well located core assets through an active asset management approach identifying operational inefficiencies without the added risk of extensive capital improvements," said Greg Marx, ACG's EVP of Student Housing Investments. Marx added, "Our vision for The Standard was straightforward: mark rental rates to market by identifying pricing inefficiencies without deploying capital for unit renovations, introduce new ancillary income outlets, and reduce expense overhead. We successfully executed on our strategy and overarching investment thesis and were able to deliver outsized returns as a result."