BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI—Earlier this month, Agree Realty Corp. said it had closed on the acquisition of 15 retail properties at a total purchase price of approximately $42.1 million. Located across 10 states, the properties are net leased to 12 different tenants, and include the net lease REIT's first Bed Bath & Beyond, Old Navy and Dress Barn stores, as well as the first Wendy's restaurants in the portfolio. Also acquired were properties net leased to Sherwin Williams, Family Dollar, Academy Sports + Outdoors and Jo-Ann Fabric and Crafts.

Joey Agree, the company's president and CEO, said in a statement that the company is focused on “investing in properties net leased to leading retailers operating in e-commerce resistant sectors, and are on track to achieve our targeted 2015 acquisition volume of $175 million to $200 million.” That being said, acquisition opportunities are not the only reason that Agree and his company are bullish about their prospects. GlobeSt.com recently sat down with Agree to get his take on what this year holds in store across the multiple platforms ADC operates.

GlobeSt.com: Agree Realty recently reported a very strong fourth quarter and full-year 2014. What does this year look like?

Joey Agree: We are generally excited about the opportunities we see in 2015. We're focused on continuing to grow the scale of our three external growth platforms: acquisitions, development and our joint venture capital solutions program. The growth we've seen in our platforms has been tremendous. Just two years ago, our investment committee reviewed $750 million in opportunities. In 2014, we had $2.45 billion brought to us, so it's more than a threefold increase.

That's driven by a number of factors. We've had some great people join our team; the marketplace has begun to understand what differentiates us; we're in year five of our platform and the entire marketplace is now aware of our capabilities.  

GlobeSt.com: When looking at acquiring properties, what criteria help you determine which are desirable and which you'd rather take a pass on?

Agree: Our underwriting approach is really a bottoms-up analysis. It's real estate-centric, and we're focused on a number of factors when we review the opportunities. We're obviously looking at lease term, yield, credit—all of the standard net lease attributes. But our underwriting approach has a pretty unique emphasis on retail synergy, residual values, four-wall performance of the unit, of the store, demographics, traffic counts. We're unique in the space in that we're truly a real estate-driven organization. 

We see spreads as an output. It's really delivering those unique real estate opportunities, and that comes from our development roots. Our acquisitions platform was launched in 2010, but this company and its predecessor, Agree Development, have been developing real estate for 40 years. We're the only publicly traded net lease developer, and those experiences and capabilities really permeate all three platforms. We hope to leverage that experience across all three platforms, not just organic development opportunities.

GlobeSt.com: Looking at some of the development opportunities you see this year, what do you like in terms of location and type of asset?

Agree: Our development platform is really a partnership with retailers—not in terms of ownership, but working hand in hand with retailers to deliver new store opportunities as well as relocations. We're geographically agnostic, so we have worked with retailers such as Walgreens as far west as Oakland and Sacramento. And then we're working in southeast Florida on expanding industry leading C-store operators such as Wawa. It's really a relationship-driven approach. We're focused on gas and C-stores, we're focused on auto parts and service centers as well as the big-box discount opportunities. We have the capability and the track record to develop from coast to coast, and we're focused on deploying a material amount of capital, leveraging our access to capital, our cost of capital advantages to deliver sites to retailers on time and on budget.

GlobeSt.com: How does the capital solutions program complement the other two platforms?

Agree: On one side of the spectrum we have organic development, where we work with retailers on market research, site selection, site identification and we do everything soup to nuts. On the other side, we acquire stabilized assets, where we're buying an asset subject to a lease that somebody else developed and which may have gone through multiple iterations of ownership. Our joint venture capital solution program targets everything in the middle, between those two platforms. We're looking to leverage all of our capabilities, most importantly our balance sheet and access to capital, but also our development and construction entitlement expertise, our in-house engineering and architectural expertise, our tenant relationships. We're partnering with private developers, bringing their pipelines to fruition and leveraging our resources. Ultimately we commit to purchasing 100% interest in the asset.

There's no typical transaction; they come in all shapes and sizes. Most importantly, we're looking for the right partners that have pipelines of retail opportunities and relationships with retailers.