A capital markets broker specializing in bringing cross-border investments to North America has taken on a new role at boutique real estate services firm Goodwin Advisors, where he will concentrate on securing capital and placing equity from other countries into U.S. projects.
Richard Stevenson recently joined the Dallas-based boutique advisory firm after spending 15 years at Savills, where he worked with several real estate asset classes in a variety of markets. The real estate executive, originally from the United Kingdom, has worked in London, New York and Los Angeles and has a background as an institutional adviser in investment sales, acquisitions and debt and equity placement.
"With the turbulence in the capital markets, we are seeing more and more interest in U.S. real estate from overseas investors," Evan Stone, founder of Goodwin, told CoStar News. "We really didn't think anyone in the U.S. had better connections overseas than Richard did, and it was the next logical step to round out our equity placement business."
Unlike U.S. real estate investment firms that have "boots on the ground" to manage their real estate, investors from other countries often don't have a U.S. office or a team ready to manage a newly acquired property, Stone said. This is where firms such as Goodwin can consult with investors to find the right operating partner with a good track record, Stone said.
Stevenson brings to Goodwin his experience working with private family offices, sovereign wealth funds, global asset managers and many other investor types with varying risk profiles to U.S. real estate. The past year has been a difficult one for making deals partly because of the wide bid-ask spread that exists between potential buyers and sellers and the ongoing uncertainty in the capital markets, Stevenson said. That could change this year as the bid-ask delta on properties in gateway U.S. cities narrows and results in more deal-making activity, Stevenson said.
"There are opportunities in the U.S. market that is partly investor led and [in] helping them understand and find the right opportunities," Stevenson told CoStar News. "At the moment, we are seeing a lot of demand across the Sun Belt. There's emerging distress in office and there are family offices looking for high-quality buildings in good locations that take a generational hold period and are not driven by short-term returns."
Stevenson has experience working in Canada, along with the United States. Mexico is a more difficult market to work in on this basis, he said, though there have been a few conversations about properties in the country.
"Investors are looking for opportunities, but they are also looking for people that they trust and believe they will take good care of them with a track record to prove it," Stevenson said. Non-U.S. investors, he said, also are seeking to place capital in regions with tailwinds supporting their future viability. Moreover, the U.S. has some low-cost opportunities for first-time buyers in certain markets, Stevenson said.
For investors doing their homework and placing capital in the right opportune places, Stone said "once in a lifetime" opportunities exist in the U.S. real estate market. "These are genius-making times," he said.