Starlight Investments announced it will acquire $750-million of purpose-built rental apartments through a new vehicle called the Starlight Canadian Core Multi-Family Fund, in partnership with funds managed by CIBC Asset Management.

The open-ended fund will be focused on acquiring and managing high-quality, income-producing, purpose-built multifamily rental properties in Canada's largest urban markets.

The fund will have an initial equity investment of $415 million from the CIBC-managed investment funds, which will facilitate the initial acquisition of $750 million of purpose-built rental apartments.

Over time, Starlight reports the "evergreen" fund will scale through additional investments from institutional investors and accredited individual investors exclusively through a feeder fund to be established and managed by CIBC Asset Management Inc.

"Starlight is pleased to announce our strategic relationship with CIBC Global Asset Management to deliver a best-in-class Canadian core multifamily investment offering," said Daniel Drimmer, founder and chief executive officer of Starlight Investments, in the announcement Tuesday morning. "The fund is designed to offer investors an institutional-quality portfolio with stable income, underpinned by robust fundamentals in the sector."

Starlight did not provide details of the acquisition properties in the announcement, and declined further comment when RENX requested additional information about the portfolio.

The Canadian Core fund strategy

The fund strategy is to invest in newly built and substantially renovated purpose-built multifamily rental properties focused in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario's Golden Horseshoe region, Greater Vancouver and Greater Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.

Starlight will manage the fund. The launch of the fund is a key milestone as Starlight's first residential-focused, open-ended investment vehicle. Starlight is Canada's largest multifamily owner and manager.

"Investors are increasingly seeking alternative investment opportunities beyond publicly traded securities, and private real estate continues to offer strong diversification and attractive risk-adjusted returns," said Eric Bélanger, executive vice-president and head, CIBC Global Asset Management, in the announcement.

"We are very excited to forge a strategic relationship with Starlight and provide our clients with the opportunity to invest in Canadian residential real estate alongside Canada's leading multi-family manager."

About Starlight, CIBC and CIBC Global Asset Mgmt.

Starlight Investments is a global real estate investment and asset management firm headquartered in Toronto.

A privately held owner, developer and asset manager of over 70,000 multiresidential suites and over seven million square feet of commercial property space with $30 billion in assets under management, Starlight offers a range of investment vehicles across various real estate strategies.

CIBC is a Canadian financial institution with 14 million personal banking, business, public sector and institutional clients.

Across personal and business banking, commercial banking and wealth management and capital markets, CIBC offers services through its digital banking network and locations across Canada, in the United States and around the world.

CIBC Global Asset Management (CGAM) represents the asset management business of CIBC with over $250 billion in assets under management in Canada and $120 billion in assets under management in the U.S. CGAM offers a range of global investment management solutions to individual and institutional clients.