Investors find working models for Germany's school backlog

A former Deutsche Börse headquarters in Frankfurt now accommodates 3,200 students under a 30-year lease to the City of Frankfurt. Completed in just two and a half years after its conversion from office use, the project offers perhaps the clearest demonstration yet of why educational real estate is beginning to attract serious institutional capital in Germany.

The project featured prominently in an online press conference on 17th June, where representatives of CapMan, NEXT Generation Invest and CELLS argued that educational infrastructure is evolving from a specialist niche into a distinct asset class. The timing is significant. Germany faces an estimated €68bn school infrastructure backlog, while the number of pupils is expected to rise by a further 430,000 by 2035. Municipalities increasingly face a simple problem: demand is growing faster than their ability to deliver new capacity.