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What’s on Real Estate Investors' Minds?

12/9/2021

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Market Topics from Miami US Real Estate Conference for Latin American Investors

Last week Simon O'Shea (Ballast Rock CIO), Ian Garcia (Ballast Rock COO & Treasurer) and I were asked to present at a US Real Estate conference in Miami for Latin American Investors. Below are some of the topics on investors' minds at the conference:
  1. Capital continues to flow into real estate from both domestic as well as overseas investors. The swing to the far left in a number of South American nations has left local investors spooked and they are looking to move capital overseas and out of local currencies.  Some large local corporates have cleared out their cash holdings (examples in Chile), preferring to make sizable dividend payments to investors and allow those investors to move money offshore, rather than reinvest locally in the medium term.  A lot of this LatAm capital is looking for a home in US real estate.
  2. As cap rates have compressed nationally, people are getting more and more creative in their hunt for yield.  One developer was buying distressed/abandoned standalone golf courses and trying to develop new communities.  A potentially lucrative strategy, but also highly risky given the level of permitting risk involved.  Another developer was buying landfill to fill with asbestos and cement.  Not scalable (and questionable for the environment), but highly profitable.
  3. At the same time, investors are increasingly conscious of risk and looking for downside protection e.g. one sponsor is buying Midwest single family residential ("SFR") then converting to Section 8 housing - low upside, but protected downside trade (although they were scaling what appeared to be too quickly). 
  4. Net lease investments are also increasingly in demand as the economy rebounds and life returns to “sort of normal” – stable cashflows from high quality tenants on long term upwards only leases provides a downside limited investment with good protection against inflation in the future. 
  5. Prime Urban Office still remains relatively unloved.  It doesn’t feel like there’s a catalyst for forced/distressed sellers, but multiple owners discussed reducing their office footprint, not to zero, but by 1/3-2/3 as they move to hybrid office model.  Some discussion of "hub and spoke" office model, smaller central office, more suburban offices for staff/client meet-ups etc.
  6. Logistics was relatively popular topic, although consensus was that last mile was now too rich with a lot of capital deployed to new construction, meaning the pricing/supply dynamic doesn’t look favorable near term. Also concerns about tenant concentration risk (“everybody seems to be chasing Amazon”)
  7. Workforce multifamily was by far the most popular topic of conversation, and specifically value-add strategies in the Southeast - there is a lot of capital looking for deals here (it was a SE conference, so naturally some geographical bias). But we expect cap rate compression to continue as there is so much capital looking for not enough product. 

Inflation on Everyone's Minds

There were a variety of views on inflation and lots of discussion about high appliance prices, difficulty in getting windows/trusses for construction etc. and Insurance costs have also gone up across the board. Whether inflation is/will be transitory is debatable, but the consensus was that most property classes should perform well in an inflationary environment. 
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In particular, workforce multifamily should perform well in periods of higher than normal inflation as the short- term nature of our leases allows us to react quickly to inflationary pressures, and the relatively low price points for the average rental rates on our portfolio mean that wage inflation should more than adequately offsets any rent increases for our communities. 
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Concerns over Cap Rate Movement

Given the current absolute levels of cap rates, there was a lot of discussion about the possibility of cap rates increasing.  Again, there were a variety of views, but we believe that our strategy of workforce multifamily value-add provides an effective hedge against any reasonable future cap rate increases. We only purchase assets where we believe we’ve identified significant net operating income upside from our capacity to add value and can look to push cap rates 100-150bps higher through operational efficiencies and CapEx deployment. 

At Ballast Rock we help originate and distribute countercyclical and recession resilient real estate funds.  Please feel free to connect to learn more about how we work with experienced real estate professionals to offer investors the opportunity to invest in income producing assets with a positive social impact.​
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Why Invest in Real Estate in Small- to Medium-Sized Cities?

12/4/2021

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​At Ballast Rock, we specialize in investing in real estate in small- to medium-sized cities across the Southeastern USA because our experience shows properties in these cities often offer better opportunities to add value (i.e. “alpha”) and increasingly more significant market rent growth potential in the current market environment.  As demonstrated in the graphs below, we have been able to outperform our own underwriting on our current portfolio both in terms of cap-rate and rent growth because - in our experience - the demand/supply constraints in real estate are often particularly acute in smaller markets compared to primary markets.  In this article we will highlight some of the quantitative data that explain our investment thesis and provide some qualitative reasoning for this opportunity.
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These two graphs were built using Ballast Rock internal data, comparing our expectations with the realized performance over two years since acquisition for all assets in Sunbelt Fund I and Sunbelt Multifamily Fund II thus far.
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Quantitative Data:

​Costar (one of the main real estate industry data providers) has sales indexes that track two segments: 
i) “value-weighted,” meaning big sales in the largest markets, and,
ii) “equal-weighted,” made up of more numerous but lower-priced sales in smaller areas.  
Both moved higher in October, but the equal-weighted U.S. composite index advanced at a stronger pace:
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Source: Costar
​The above data demonstrates that pricing of smaller deals in smaller markets has outpaced larger deals in larger markets since the onset of the pandemic.  Given the above, we wanted to provide some qualitative rationale as to why we believe we are able to add more value add in smaller markets compared to larger markets.

Qualitative Reasons:

‘Mom-and-Pop’ Owners:
Some of our success stories (Huntingdon, Holiday Cove, Spring Lake, Amelia West) have come when buying properties that are owned by ‘mom and pop’ owners.  Whether it is a single real estate owner/operator, a couple that is managing their nest egg, or a family that has owned the property for years, there are frequently immediate avenues for upside when buying from these types of sellers.
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To provide a concrete example we can look at Huntingdon in Albany, GA. The prior owner was a family that had owned the property for 30+ years. The below bullet points highlight the types of mismanagement that we frequently see when buying from mom-and-pop sellers:
  • They were running improvements and typical capex spending above the line which resulted in $2.5-3k/unit/year in above-the-line repairs & maintenance cost. Our typical expectation for an asset of this vintage is $600-900/unit/year in repairs & maintenance cost.
  • One of the family members was spending tens of thousands on custom cabinetry for apartments that rent for $600-800 in Albany, GA where a new basic set of cabinetry is available (at a cost of $3-4k/unit) and would return the same rental premium.
  • They were paying all 3 of themselves salaries through the community, resulting in a total of six staff members for a community that would typically run 2-3 staff.
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Fayetteville, NC is an example of a city in which Ballast Rock invests.
Less Competition from Other Buyers: 
In our experience, there is a smaller buyer pool in secondary/tertiary markets than in primary markets. Because of this smaller buyer pool, we see fewer bidding wars during fully marketed processes, and we are frequently able to acquire assets at a discount relative to the cap rates at which similar vintage/sized properties would have traded in primary markets (based on CoStar data).
No Daily Pricing Software for Rents:
In larger urban markets with more competition, many larger operators tend to use daily pricing software to set their rental levels.  This daily pricing software tracks the rental levels of other comparable properties and will frequently undercut prices in order to better generate demand for properties.  In smaller markets without daily pricing software, we can manually set our rents on a monthly or bi-monthly basis without having to worry about daily/weekly shifts in rental levels.
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Columbia, SC is another example of a city in which Ballast Rock invests.
Brokers Not Maximizing Sale Proceeds:
Typically, price per unit (and total deal size) in secondary/tertiary markets trails that of primary markets according to Costar data. As a result, there are fewer brokers competing for business and listing agreements in these markets. Because of the reduced competition, we have found that brokers will fall short on pricing for a variety of reasons:
  • Inexperience: the brokers that work these smaller deals are generally the junior members of their team. This lack of experience frequently manifests itself in a lack of attention to detail on underwriting.  Whether the broker misses an avenue to add ancillary revenue or an expense line item that is due to be cut, this inexperience can result in incorrectly priced underwriting.
  • Resource management: because of the lower fee sums for smaller deals, brokerage shops will often allocate fewer internal resources to the sales of these assets. 
  • Smaller brokerage shops: because of the competition in primary markets, we have found that a lot of smaller brokerage shops target smaller markets in order to have a better shot at securing listings.  These smaller shops frequently do not have the same mailing list of the larger shops, which results in fewer eyes on any given deal. 
At Ballast Rock we help originate and distribute countercyclical and recession resilient real estate funds.  Please feel free to connect to learn more about how we work with experienced real estate professionals to offer investors the opportunity to invest in income producing assets with a positive social impact.
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Deal Sourcing and Underwriting: Understanding a Key Part of the Ballast Rock “Special Sauce”

11/3/2021

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A Comprehensive Look at Underwriting Process
At Ballast Rock we pride ourselves in our process-oriented approach to sourcing, underwriting, and acquiring real estate.  The “secret sauce” to our success comes from our deep relationships with sellers and brokers in the Southeast, our attention to detail, and our boots on the ground approach to acquisition and management.  In this educational article, we briefly discuss each of the steps involved from the moment we hear about opportunities to getting to the closing table and putting the property under management.

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What is ESG Investing?

10/13/2021

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What began in 2005 as an invitation from then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to a group of the world’s largest investors (1), has turned into a global movement in “Sustainable Investing” with combined assets under management of over $17 trillion in the US alone. (2)

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Census Data Proves Positive Outlook for Southeast Multifamily Market

10/6/2021

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2020 Census data has now been released and we wanted to highlight relevant data about the continued demographic growth in the Southeast. In this article, we will review several key statistics and how they relate to the Ballast Rock Real Estate strategies.

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When Carbon Negative is a Positive

9/10/2021

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Both governments and companies have increasing started publicizing steps they are taking to reduce our carbon footprint and ultimately get to “net zero” emissions, but what does that actually mean?  ​

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Wind, Solar, and EVs Are Just Part of the Solution

8/17/2021

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Climate change has and will continue to affect everyone on earth, and the challenge to arrest this process - while operating within the constraints of a modern economy - falls on all of us.  Electric Vehicles and renewable power sources like Wind and Solar undeniably create cleaner energy over the long run.  However, the process of manufacturing wind and solar farms, as well as the batteries used in electric vehicles, are significant sources of Greenhouse Gas emissions as well as causing other environmental, national security, and labor issues.

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Investing for an Accommodative Fed and Post-Pandemic Inflation

9/25/2020

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Wednesday September 16th’s Federal Open Market Committee (“FOMC”) telegraphing of their hyper accommodative future policy strategy(1) should prove a boon for multifamily real estate investors, not only keeping interest rates lower for longer, but shifting to prioritizing growth and employment over the Fed’s prior dual focus of growth and inflation management.(2)  It is small wonder that the Fed has taken this marked change in stance on inflation, not only to allow for more rapid growth but also to diminish the long-term burden of managing the massively bourgeoning national debt required to fund pandemic rescue packages.(3) ​

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Cyber-Hygiene: Arresting Cybercrime Contamination

3/30/2020

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As the COVID-19 pandemic has forced much of the global workforce to work from home, many have suddenly started to work full-time outside the protections of corporate security programs.  Just as we have all become experts in social distancing and hand washing, we also need to be just as vigorous about our “cyber-hygiene”. As we all pull together to “flatten the curve”, many high net worth individuals and small businesses need to quickly get up the learning curve to become more cyber-secure.  This article is an interview with cybersecurity expert and policy advisor Megan Stifel (Executive Director, Americas at the Global Cyber Alliance – the “GCA”) about how to do exactly that and the direction of cybersecurity policy around the globe.

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Potential COVID-19 Effects on the Multifamily Real Estate Market

3/12/2020

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Creating a Flight to Safety or just Operational Turbulence? 
A number of investors have inquired about our view of the effect of this new coronavirus strain on their real estate investments, workforce multifamily specifically, and real estate in general.  Frankly, it is still too early to tell.  That said, based on the limited real-time information available in real estate, below are some factors and our thoughts on what we believe will be significant over the next 6-12 months.


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Late Cycle Investing: Read the Data, Not the Headlines!

11/18/2019

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I recently had the pleasure of presenting to a large group of real estate investors in Dallas at the annual 506 Group Investor Forum. As a participant in a panel about late cycle investing, it was apparent that this subject is top of mind for many investors.  Most investors have benefited from a ten-year bull run after the longest uninterrupted economic expansion in U.S. history.  Many are now looking across the U.S. economy and globally at frothy prices in many asset classes and questioning how to position themselves and their portfolios for what is to come. In this article we will frame the stages of the business cycle, attempt to ascertain where the U.S. economy is in that cycle, and ultimately discuss things to consider when positioning one’s portfolio for late cycle investing and beyond. (1) I will make the case that though we are “late cycle,” we are not “end cycle.” As such, portfolio positioning should start to contemplate recession resilience, yet not let the hangover of the Great Recession drive us to fear-based investing, in particular when it comes to real estate.

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Gender Disparity: Interviewing Female Leaders in Real Estate

8/30/2019

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Commercial Real Estate (CRE) regularly tops the list for industries with clear gender disparity.  The numbers are substantial: per the 2015 CREW Network White Paper,1 white men represent 58.5% of all professional CRE positions, 68.9% of mid-level positions, and 77.6% of senior executive positions.2  The imbalance extends beyond just opportunities, as the 2015 median annual compensation for men was $150,000 while the 2015 median compensation for women was $115,000, a 23.3% gap.3   A significant portion of this wage gap may be attributable to gender wage disparity in general, but it may also be attributable up to the types of roles that women tend to occupy within the industry.

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Portfolio Strategy: Investing for the Soon to be Retired

8/6/2019

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Even for those with the earnings, wealth, and foresight to capably prepare, being financially ready for retirement can be a daunting task. Research on the subject is widespread and can become a winding labyrinth of vendors pitching their specific product solution. In this article we attempt to summarize some of what we believe to be the most relevant and interesting materials out there and provide the perspective that educates our investing decisions.

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Millennial Migration: Housing for the Renter Generation

7/23/2019

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Millennials (born 1981 to 1997) are renting far more than prior generations.  In this article, we explore why and understand if it is by necessity or by choice. Millennials are the largest generation in U.S. history, at approximately 79 million strong — surpassing Baby Boomers by about 4 million.  Millennials (also known as Gen-Y) ​comprise 50% of all renters in the U.S., and are 8% less likely to own homes (when aged between 25 and 34yrs old) when compared to Gen-X and Baby Boomers at a similar age.   The median age of today's renter is 32 with a median household income of $37,500, and most (60%) make less than $50,000.  By comparison, 57 is the median age of today’s homeowner​ who have a median household income of $62,500.

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    Authors:
    ​Tom Carroll

    Tom is the Founder and CEO of Ballast Rock. 
    ​Prior to becoming a private equity professional, Tom had a 14yr career on Wall Street, most recently as a desk head at Goldman Sachs & Co.

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    ​Simon O'Shea
    ​
    As Chief Investment Officer for Ballast Rock Simon leverages his almost twenty years working in a variety of Institutional Fixed Income sales management positions for companies like Morgan Stanley, Lloyds Bank and BNP Paribas. 

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The information contained on the Ballastrock.com web site has been prepared by Ballast Rock Holdings LLC (“Ballast Rock”) without reference to any particular user’s investment requirements or financial situation. Potential investors are encouraged to consult with professional tax, legal, and financial advisors before making any investment into a private offering of securities.  An investment in private securities would be speculative and would involve a high degree of risk. Investors must be prepared to bear the economic risk of such an investment for an indefinite period of time and be able to withstand a total loss of their investment. Please consider carefully the investment objectives, risks, transaction costs, and other expenses related to an investment prior to deciding to invest.  All private placements of securities and other broker dealer activities are currently offered through a partnership with Independent Brokerage Solutions LLC MEMBER: FINRA / SIPC (“IndieBrokers”), which is located at 485 Madison Avenue 15th Floor New York, NY 10022. (212) 751-4424. Ballast Rock Holdings LLC and its affiliates are independent and unaffiliated with IndieBrokers.  Any securities transactions or related activities offered by Ballast Rock associated persons are conducted in their capacities as registered representatives of IndieBrokers.  Please see our Form CRS. 
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