Alpaca Launches Private Equity CRE Platform

Alternative investments management firm Alpaca announced a new platform for private equity real estate. Its “inaugural dedicated real estate offering, which is anchored by capital from GCM Grosvenor, … [is] made on behalf of several investors,” the company said.

“The team intends to capitalize on the current dislocations between capital markets and operating fundamentals, with an emphasis on investment opportunities that require recapitalization, repositioning, strategic capital, and/or physical transformation,” the company said. “Additionally, ARE [Alpaca Real Estate] will leverage accretive technology and/or operating overlays to enhance efficiencies and generate incremental alpha across its real estate holdings.”

Vendors have shown a lot of interest in providing CRE tools for different customer segments. Intapp focuses its DealCloud offering as “a complete deal, relationship, and pipeline management solution for financial services firms.” GoDocs has its software for loan document processing. Avenue One offers tools for single-family rental investors.

“Today’s reset real estate market creates a prime opportunity for a cycle-tested team to establish a platform with dry powder and without any legacy asset management issues,” said company co-founder Daniel Carr in prepared remarks. “Alpaca Real Estate will focus on deployment into high-conviction sectors that have been negatively impacted by capital markets but exhibit strong underlying tailwinds.”

One of the complications for the sector is the ongoing lack of price discovery because of large drops in transactions and the over representation of properties that are more likely to be facing difficulties in refinancing or some other need for a sale now when valuations are down. In other words, while the emphasis is on the technology, and while software can help improve operational efficiencies, investors and operators still need sound strategies and insight.