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. Here are some of the topics on investors' minds at the conference.

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.

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.

ESG is an investment approach that considers environmental, social, and governance factors as part of the overall investment decision and does not just focus on financial rewards. For many investors, the belief is that their investment capital will be used to invest not just for pure economic profit, but for greater environmental and social good.

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.

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?

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.

In this article we discuss likely U.S. economic scenarios for exiting the pandemic recession, headline vs. housing inflation, and national vs. Southeastern regional inflation, and whether multifamily real estate can be a good hedge for inflation.

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”.

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.

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.

In this article we interview Danielle Miner (Head of In-house Property Management) and Kristy Greene (Midwest Asset Management), both senior leaders within the Watermark Partners Real Estate team that have come from different backgrounds and take distinct approaches to their roles. In our Q&A we examine their role within the company and attempt to understand some of the barriers that they face as women in a predominantly male industry.