Real estate specialist adds $275 million in assets in one week, focusing on workforce housing
Avenue Living Asset Management has seized the opportunity to expand, acquiring $275 million in assets within the space of one week in Edmonton, Alberta.
The acquisitions include 1,566 doors, doubling the company’s Edmonton holding, which now accounts for 25 per cent of the company’s multi-family portfolio. Focusing on a particular segment of multi-family, workforce housing, Avenue Living believes its strategy goes beyond a sole focus on location and also targets resident demographic.
Anthony Giuffre, founder and CEO, told WP a changing of the guard is happening in real estate. He explained that passive landlords are often not able to invest the capital required to maintain operations in today’s business landscape and are now divesting from non-core assets. Avenue Living has, therefore, positioned itself to acquire and integrate low-density assets into its ecosystem.
“We’re still owners and operators,” Giuffre said. “Our laser focus on operations has led to a platform that is built to scale and absorbs assets efficiently. We have a tech-forward, vertically integrated model that was built over 16 years to focus on managing the ‘hard to manage’.
“We now have the ability to buy and integrate an upper-scale product at an incredibly attractive rate.”
Avenue Living has grown from 24 doors in 2006 to 12,500 doors today. The CEO said that five successful principles are behind its success: establish the mandate with your own capital, prove the thesis through acquisitions, de-risk through operations, and then raise external capital to grow and scale.
He added that the pandemic has proved the resilience of the asset manager’s business model, expanded its overall AUM by more than 80 per cent, from $1.5 billion at the beginning of 2020 to $2.8 billion today.
Giuffre added: “Edmonton is unique. We want to continue to strategically grow our portfolio in this market and will continue to explore future opportunities. Everything is about price, customer, and location. We have found remarkable success in this market, and our recent $275 million investment in Edmonton is a testament to this.”
