Cortland's Value-Add Strategy

Next week is Bisnow's 4th Annual  Atlanta Capital Market Summit at the W Midtown (get your tickets here). We reached out to one of our panelists, Cortland Partners' CEO Steven DeFrancis, about the heated multifamily investment market. What's changed since last year? "There's a lot more capital and it's demanding less," Steven tells us, adding that investors are chasing yield and looking beyond the core Class-A urban assets, even in Atlanta. Cortland, like other apartment investors, seeks value-add projects.  Most recently, Cortland purchased The Halstead in Houston (above) for $47M. As Steven says, many of the properties trading today were developed or bought in the mid-2000s when owners became overleveraged—but not so much that they had to default. Many landlords were reluctant to funnel more money into a property, and hence rents faltered. "In order to get those residents back in at those  pre-downturn rates, you have to invest the capital in the units."