Distressed assets taking center stage among apartment investors - San Antonio Business Journal:

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Now, buyers are looking for something a bit Of the handful of investment opportunities that existg in the localapartment market, those assetds moving to the top of list these days are the so-caller distressed assets, industry brokers say. Specifically, the cream of that crop are bank-owned or REO (real estate assets — foreclosed properties that have gone back to the Also falling intothe “distressed” category are apartment properties put on the marke t due to the owners’ financial dire straits. Phoenixc and Miami have seen a deluge of REO deala over the past18 months, according to Caseyg Fry, an associate with the San Antonio/Austinn office of Atlanta-based (ARA).
The first wave of these propertiesa have now surfaced in San Antonio as Fry says. The city’s relatively stable economy makes it unlikelty that the local market will see as many of these REOs and distressed property salezs asother metros, but as Fry pointa out: “There will be more to come.” Whilse transaction velocity in San Antonio has slowed considerably over the past two there is the likelihood that more apartment communitiew will come to market — as more ownerss find themselves needing to adds Will Balthrope, a member of the Balthroper Group of the .
Balthrope’xs partner is Ryan Epstein, who is based in San Balthrope’s office is located in Looking back over the past year athis team’s property assignments — including thosew that have already changed ownership, as well as thosw still for sale — abour 90 percent of these properties were beinfg sold by owners who had founr themselves in financial trouble. Or as Balthrope puts it, thesed were owners who had “compelling reasons to What’s the attraction of distressedf assets? Sums up “The opportunity to profit in a time ofvalur change.
” Words like “distressed” and are like big signs on the asseg that say, “Come look at Balthrope says. And for every owner that has a compellingb reasonto sell, there are myriadf buyers anxiously waiting to take advantage of a good observes Patton K. Jones, managing director of ARA’s Austin office. So who are the buyerzs now? According to it’s all private money these days — or what he calls “countrg club money.” “The institutional investores are gone,” says adding that most of theseplayers — names like and have fallen on tough financial times.
“Now it’s the privatr investors who are going to theircountrh clubs, to their friends and family and raising It’s a lot of new blood coming in, Fry “The buyers out they are not on our regular he adds.