Family Office Real Estate Blog

In 2016, alternative assets continued to remain in the spotlight , attracting  increased investor attention  and delivering  outsized returns  compared to core property types. As we step into 2017, National Real Estate Investor online reached out to experts in the seniors housing, student housing, medical office buildings (MOB), single-family rentals (SFR) and data center sectors for the preliminary outlook for the year. Medical Office Buildings New medical office building (MOB) construction was prominent in 2016, according to Krone Weidler, of brokerage firm Marcus & Millichap. New MOB office deliveries in 2017 (based on preliminary construction data) are expected to meet or exceed totals from 2016, says Hilda Martin, principal at medical real estate data firm RevistaMed. At the same time, investors should expect cap rates in the sector to increase this year as well, Weidler notes, as a result of the Fed raising its benchmark interest rates. That shouldn’t have too much o

Just a little while ago myself and my patriarch sat down with another family and began discussing real estate and our strategy.  As the family office really didn't understand real estate, they started to ask questions on how we looked at deals and evaluated opportunities. Thinking back I think that a lot of the questions came from the fact that they created their wealth in the LBO market and thus understood the different nuances of businesses.  Now many families created their wealth from a business but this particular family was involved in 39 different industries, thus I believe their frame of reference was a little different. Our family office created their wealth in real estate and one big part of that has to do with the degree of analytics that is used in our office.  In fact, I have been asking for about 10 years why people are not more analytical about real estate decisions.   All too often a family office is approached by real estate funds or operators because they work

A few weeks ago I ran across this article that was from July 14, 2016 from Family Capital. This focuses on family offices real estate investing in the UK, but still though it is relevant to the trends by family offices. The number of deals involving real estate is a big part of the current direct deal boom driven by family offices, as the world’s wealthiest investors bet on strong property demand in the top real estate markets. Just this week the family office of Stefan Persson, Sweden’s wealthiest individual and the chairman of the fashion chain H&M,  was reported  to have purchased a retail property complex in central London for a massive £400 million. If the deal goes through, it will be a big vote of confidence in the London commercial property market after the recent turmoil brought about by Brexit. It will also be indicative of how family offices are often able to take riskier investment bets than their institutional counterparts. After Brexit, many institutional an

Many investors want to gain access to family office investors.  After working with the large institutions and real estate private equity funds I can personally tell you that the family office marketplace is distinctly different.   Believe it or not it is more similar to the retail market than it is the institutional market. I can't tell you how many times that I have sat at a conference listening to a sponsor pitching their deal.  I feel that I am pretty smart and understand alot of different strategies and structures but I can't tell you how many times I have listed to a sponsor talk about their strategy and my eyes would start to glaze over because they were speaking as if it was a foreign language.  The first thing I think of is "the sponsor has no idea of their audience" and this is something I have not seen only once but many times. For example, one time I was at Family Office Association event and one of the sponsors was in front of the room going over