WESTON REAL ESTATE
Weston Inc. today owns and manages a real estate portfolio of more than 10 million square feet, and serves more than 400 tenants in the Greater Cleveland area and across the country.
“Our mission, what we need to keep at the heart of everything, is an unwavering and uncompromising focus on customer service.” James Asher, President of Weston.
Weston Equity
Weston’s Real Estate Equity Review
By Ed Asher
June 6, 2008
Historically Weston leveraged its resources or sold property to raise the equity required for new property acquisitions. About 5 years ago that strategy changed when Weston formed its Keystone division.
Keystone was formed to find new properties to acquire and to find equity investors to raise the bulk of the equity needed. Keystone acts as the sponsor of its deals, the managing partner, and contributes 10% to 50% of the equity required.
Weston/Keystone has successfully raised over $10,000,000 in outside investor capital and completed 12 new deals from 2005 to 2007. Our success in raising equity from individual investors has enabled us to raise our expectations and to take our use of the equity markets to the next level.
Weston completed its first partnership with an institutional equity partner in May, 2008. Blue Vista Capital Partners provided 90% of the equity required to purchase 2 bulk warehouse facilities in Greenville and Spartanburg, South Carolina. Weston is now actively investing institutional equity.
These acquisitions also help Weston achieve its goal of acquiring more property out of state. Weston will continue to seek opportunistic value add industrial properties in strategic logistic locations. Weston plans to continue to use outside equity sources to complete future transactions. This allows Weston to leverage its capital, to become more diversified and to complete more deals.
Presently Weston has a strong stable of individual investors and plans more extensive use of the institutional equity market. This combination of investors enables Weston to complete a variety of transactions, from the smallest to the largest transactions. Weston will continue to be a value added driven investor looking to acquire properties that have significant upside potential.
Investor demand continues to remains strong for value added industrial properties. Investors use conservative underwriting and stick to their return goals but they want to do more good deals. Lenders have gotten much more conservative in their underwriting and are pricing their loans much higher than in 2007. This has made it much more difficult to find deals that meet Seller expectations and investor return requirements.
Regardless, Weston anticipates it will acquire more property, and do more deals, than any year since its inception in 1972. Good deals are out there, you just have to look a little harder. And Weston is well positioned, through its strategic relationships and track record of accomplishment, to find good deals and meet investor’s return requirements.
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Weston Inc.
29300 Aurora Road
Solon, Ohio 44139
Phone 440.349.9000
