News
What We're Buying
July 24, 2013
Here's the tale of two CRE buyers. One's an Atlanta-based apartment investor. The other a major international institutional investor. And both offered investment strategy to the 250 CRE pros at yesterday's Bisnow Capital Markets Summit at the W Hotel in Midtown. Metlife's Russ Paper, above, says the insurance giant is being more aggressive now on industrial and grocery-anchored property buys "because we're under-weighted on that." Apartments are still a target, and it's being "selective" with office (it did recently pursue One Alliance Center, ultimately acquired by Highwoods) and "under the right circumstance, we'll even do hotels."
Cortland Partners' Steven DeFrancis is focused on multifamily. What it specifically looks for is the "prettiest building at the lowest price." (That's how we picked our wedding location...but not the bride.) That means value-add (which is how our bride sees us). Specifically focused on markets where supply growth is relative to economic growth (or as he put it, ratio of new jobs to new apartment units). For instance, Cortland is eyeing a property in Tampa, where only 5,000 new units are coming online. That's versus a market like Dallas, where, yes, there's been tremendous job growth, but also 35,000 new apartment units under way.
