Vestas Overseas Real Estate Investment Team speaks about prospects in the U.S
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Choi Hyun-su, senior manager of the U.S Region for the overseas real estate team in Vestas Investment Management (VIM), has established a fund in conjunction with domestic institutional investors, arranging two loans focusing on five-star luxury hotels in the best areas of Washington D.C. and New York.
After majoring in Hotel Finance at Glion Institute of Higher Education of Switzerland, Choi has built his career at Morgan Stanley, Mirae Asset MAPS and LaSalle Investment Management and joined the VIM Overseas Real Estate Team last September.
Vestas Investment Management is a real estate investment management firm established in 2010. Its management assets at home and abroad total about 4.2 trillion won ($3.68 billion) constituting a variety of assets such as offices, retails, logistics and hotels.
The management is based on the real estate fund created from domestic and foreign investors.
Since the overseas real estate team was created with new members at the beginning of 2016, the team is steadily expanding the portfolios of overseas real estate by establishing 10 overseas real estate funds until now (2.2 trillion won on the basis of investment management).
Based on this, it was possible to post rapid growth as one of top eight real estate investment management firms at present, according to the Korea Financial Investment Association standards.
Choi believes domestic institutional investors will maintain relatively conservative perspectives for the time being with respect to real estate equity investment in U.S market, due to the possibility of continued base rate increases in the U.S.
However, based on the preference for no-risk assets and expectation of an interest rate increase, he expects demand for loan-type products of prior and mezzanine order in U.S. commercial real estate will remain steady.
Moreover, the team plans to carry out constant reviews of real estate loans focusing on hotels and offices with high profit potential as compared with low-risk according to the standards of U.S major cities.
Furthermore, in the second half of 2017, with demand for loan-type funds focusing on U.S real estate expected to grow, the team is scheduled to consult and prepare loan-type blind fund releases of up to 200-300 billion won in cooperation with the U.S local partners.
The aim of this is to raise the power of negotiation of prime projects and securing projects under favorable conditions.