Brookfield, Varia form $694M multifamily venture

Varia US Properties has struck a venture with Brookfield Asset Management around a 13-property U.S. multifamily book. The Swiss landlord announced the $694 million deal Thursday. Varia will collect $48.9 million when it closes in the fourth quarter. It can draw on as much as $200 million in equity for new acquisitions, Bisnow reported. Christopher Roman of Ropes & Gray represented Varia.

The portfolio holds 4,112 units across nine states. The four-building slice Brookfield is buying is valued at $178.4 million, with Brookfield owning 90% and Varia keeping 10% plus the management contract. The remaining nine buildings are worth $515 million and hold 3,052 units. Brookfield will own 40% of that pool, which is slated to be sold over three years.

Four properties sit outside the venture, two of them slated for sale, and the proceeds are meant to fund a move into higher-quality residential assets. SWI Group CEO Max-Herve George said the venture gives Varia "the firepower and the flexibility to concentrate on high-quality residential communities, while positioning Varia US to grow decisively as the U.S. living sector continues to reward scale and discipline."

Varia's full U.S. portfolio carried a $947 million valuation at the end of March. It spans 19 properties and 5,769 units. The company was founded in 2015 and is managed by Geneva-based Stoneweg SA. Stoneweg combined with Icona Capital in March 2025 to form SWI Group, which oversees about €10 billion in assets.

The same day, SWI announced a parallel move: a 70% stake in Genesis Digital Assets, which will be renamed SWI Digital. SWI already puts more than 80% of its capital into a 4-gigawatt digital infrastructure portfolio and wants that share at 90%, while building an AI cloud business that sells compute directly to companies. The two announcements describe a firm selling down legacy multifamily and doubling down on data centers.

Brookfield is not buying a clean portfolio; it is buying a ladder. It takes near-full ownership of the properties it wants to keep, a 40% stake in the nine it wants to sell, and hands Varia cash and a capital line. For a European shareholder base that has watched U.S. suburban multifamily values reset, the deal converts a dated portfolio into liquidity without a fire sale.

The three-year sale book is where the deal gets tested. The $515 million portfolio will be sold property by property, and the same week Brookfield signed on to a $500 billion Nvidia framework for AI infrastructure alongside Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs and KKR, as PWD covered. The multifamily venture is a smaller expression of the same instinct: take control of a book, reposition it, and let the seller keep a piece of the upside.