Catella is a Stockholm-headquartered, Nasdaq Stockholm-listed real-estate investment manager. Its Catella European Residential Fund made its first Portuguese investment in January 2022, acquiring the 192-room MILESTONE Carcavelos Lombos student residence near Nova SBE for approximately €15.5 million.
Catella's Portuguese debut came through its Luxembourg-domiciled Catella European Residential Fund, which closed the roughly €15.5 million purchase of the MILESTONE Carcavelos Lombos student residence in January 2022. The asset — completed in 2020 with LEED Gold certification — offers 192 single rooms across 6,622 square metres in the Lombos district of Carcavelos, a ten-minute walk from the Nova School of Business and Economics campus, and was acquired at 99 percent occupancy from Vienna-based developer Value One Holding.
The residence continues to be operated by Milestone, Value One's student-living brand, while Catella holds the asset within its pan-European residential strategy. The deal marked one of the first institutional student-housing transactions by a Nordic fund manager in Portugal, in a market where purpose-built student accommodation remains structurally undersupplied relative to Lisbon's growing international student population.
Catella's Carcavelos purchase is a clean example of Swedish institutional capital entering Portuguese alternative real estate: a Nasdaq Stockholm-listed manager, a pan-European fund vehicle, and a Portuguese asset whose demand is driven by the internationalisation of Lisbon's universities. It set a reference point that other Nordic residential investors have since followed as Portugal's living-sector market matures.
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