Nido Livensa Group plans for Florence €50m+ PBSA conversion

Nido Livensa Group, a European student accommodation platform backed by CPP Investments, has purchased a 10,000 m2 office building in Florence’s Rifredi district.

Office building in Florence’s Rifredi district

The platform plans to invest over €50 mln to convert the underused commercial property into high-quality, purpose-built student accommodation. Strategically positioned between the Novoli and Morgagni-Careggi university campuses, the project targets one of Europe's most structurally undersupplied student housing markets.

Rather than relying on scarce undeveloped land, Nido Livensa Group is utilising an adaptive reuse strategy to reposition written-off real assets. This flexible approach—sourcing off-market and structured deals from banks, landowners, and developers—allows the company to drive urban regeneration while alleviating pressure on the local private rental market.

The Florence acquisition marks the platform's third major transaction in Italy within the past year, following its initial entry into Milan and Turin in 2025. Together, these three projects expand Nido Livensa Group's Italian portfolio to more than 1,300 beds.

Carlo Matta, CEO of Nido Livensa Group, said: “Florence needs places for students to live. We bought a bank office and we’re turning it into homes a few minutes from two of the city’s biggest campuses. That is the kind of deal we want more of: real assets, real locations, brought back into use rather than left to sit. We can build from the ground up or take on a tired building and reinvent it, and increasingly we’re looking at how the same locations and operating platform can support other forms of living, not just student housing. Florence is our third deal in Italy in a year. It won’t be the last.”

The acquisition was made through Student Living Italy 1, a closed-end real estate alternative reserved investment fund managed by Investire SGR.

Greenberg Traurig, CBRE and PwC acted for Nido Livensa Group.

This acquisition aligns with Nido Livensa Group’s broader growth roadmap, which aims to expand its current portfolio of over 13,000 beds to a target of 25,000 beds by 2031 across Germany, Italy, Iberia, and other core European regions.