Wee Hur's Adelaide student housing property to launch next January under new brand

WEE Hur Holdings' purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) property at 124 Waymouth Street in Adelaide will be the first to be launched under its new Y Suites brand.

The mainboard-listed group's wholly owned subsidiary, Wee Hur Hospitality, on Tuesday announced Y Suites as the brand for its PBSA portfolio in Australia.

The Waymouth property, Wee Hur's second PBSA in Adelaide, will have 811 rooms and start operations in January next year.

Australian PBSA operator UniLodge was appointed for the property management of the portfolio, under a white-label arrangement with Y Suites. Y Suites will be the "strategic brand driver" for marketing, sales and reservations.

The portfolio is held under Wee Hurt PBSA Master Trust and managed by Wee Hur Capital. Including the upcoming Waymouth property, it will consist of about 5,609 beds across seven assets in five major cities in Australia. Wee Hur owns a 60 per cent stake in the trust.

Two of the PBSAs - one in Brisbane with 1,578 rooms and the other in Adelaide with 772 rooms - are operating under the UniLodge brand. In 2021, both will carry the Y Suites brand while UniLodge continues with property management, Wee Hur said.

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As for the four other properties, one is under construction in Melbourne, while two in Sydney and one in Canberra are pending development approval. All four are scheduled to become operational between 2022 and 2023, Wee Hur said. They will also operate under Y Suite progressively.

One of the Sydney properties will sit along Regent Street while the other will be on Gibbons Street, both in the inner-city suburb of Redfern.

In June, the company announced that Wee Hur PBSA Master Trust had acquired properties at 90, 92, 94 and 96 Regent Street as well as 11 units at 98-102 Regent Street for A$46 million (S$44 million) in total. These consist of a mix of ground floor retail units and upper floor residential strata units, and Wee Hur plans to redevelop them into a PBSA with about 459 beds.

Goh Yeow Lian, Wee Hur executive chairman, on Tuesday said the group had built up a "sizeable" PBSA portfolio in Australia since embarking on the business five years ago. Developing its own brand was thus a logical next step, Mr Goh added.

Besides PBSAs, the group also has businesses in construction, property development, fund management and workers' domitories.

Wee Hur shares were trading unchanged at S$0.19 as at 1.57pm on Tuesday.