A 19-story student housing tower a block from San Jose State University has sold for $204.8 million, a price that works out to roughly $787,500 per room and more than doubles the South Bay's typical per-room average. The deal for The Grad, finalized Tuesday according to county records, signals that institutional money is still chasing beds near campus.
Brookfield and Coastal Ridge Real Estate acquired the 260-unit, 1,039-bed high-rise at 88 East San Carlos Street through an affiliate, according to The Mercury News. Brookfield is a global investment firm, while Coastal Ridge Real Estate specializes in student housing, and the sale beat the South Bay's average price of $385,000 per room, as tracked by Marcus & Millichap, by 104.5 percent. The Grad's sale price also topped its own $193.5 million assessed value from January by 5.8 percent.
Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, told the outlet the sale shows the underlying strength of downtown San Jose, adding that student housing has become a hot ticket in the area. He also said the lender and owner came out whole on the deal, and that developers AMCAL and Swenson potentially achieved a profit from the sale.
From EB-5 Financing to a Record Exit
AMCAL, based in Agoura Hills, and San Jose-based Swenson began developing The Grad in 2017, and the tower opened in 2020. Construction was partly funded by $28.5 million in EB-5 mezzanine debt arranged through Behring Regional Center, according to Behring Regional Center, as part of roughly $188 million in total development costs. The building, which includes 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-bedroom floor plans, later won Best Student or Faculty Housing at the 2021 Pacific Coast Builders Conference Gold Nugget Awards, per California Buildings News.
AMCAL and Swenson first attempted to sell the tower in June 2024. Marketing documents from that effort showed a buyer could generate nearly $1.5 million in additional annual revenue by adding 46 double-occupancy beds and leasing vacant ground-floor retail space, according to The Real Deal. Instead of selling that year, the developers secured a $150 million refinancing loan from ACORE Capital Mortgage in November 2024, which replaced a prior loan CIM Group had issued in 2021.
SJSU's Housing Crunch Keeps Driving Deals
The sale lands amid a broader scramble for beds near SJSU. The university's Campus Master Plan includes 2,100 new housing beds to reach roughly 7,270 total, while enrollment is projected to increase by 8,000 through 2040, according to Local News Matters. The university's master plan also sets a goal of raising the share of students living on campus or in university-sponsored housing from 13 percent to 19 percent, per the university's own planning documents.
SJSU has been acting on that gap directly. In December 2025, the university bought a 13-story student housing tower at 184 South Market Street, Spartan Village on the Paseo, for $165 million, in a purchase package that converted the former hotel the school had opened for housing in August 2024. The property currently holds 679 beds with capacity to expand to 811. Separately, in a deal Hoodline covered in August, Dinerstein Cos. bought 27 North, a 119-unit, 475-bed apartment complex at 27 North 6th Street, for $59.4 million.
Part of a Wider Downtown Buying Spree
The Grad's sale joins a string of nine-figure downtown San Jose transactions this year. WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann's real estate company Flow entered the West Coast market by acquiring The Fay, a 23-story, 336-unit tower at 10 East Reed Street, for $175 million in a joint venture with ASJ Development after the tower had defaulted and entered foreclosure, according to The Real Deal. And in September, KKR paid $346.5 million, or $544,800 per unit, for the 636-unit Lynhaven apartment complex in west San Jose, a 42 percent premium over the South Bay's regional average.
Marcus & Millichap has projected Santa Clara County apartment rents will rise 4.4 percent in 2026, reaching an average of $3,438 a month amid persistent housing shortages, a dynamic that helps explain why investors keep pricing in strong future cash flow. SJSU's longer-term roadmap also includes redeveloping the state-owned Alquist Building for workforce housing, including graduate-student housing, according to the university's planning documents.
Staedler, for his part, expects the momentum to continue. He told the Mercury News that student housing will bolster downtown development over the next decade, with The Grad's $204.8 million exit serving as the latest marker of just how much institutional capital is willing to pay for a sure bet near campus.
