“Cole’s long-term focus has been, and continues to be, helping individual investors become the landlords of America’s industry-leading corporations.”
The words of company founder and executive chairman Christopher Cole sum up the 33-year track record of Cole Real Estate Investments, among the industry’s most active buyers of single-tenant properties, and the affiliated Cole Capital, which sponsors the non-traded REITs that are the vehicles for those individual as well as institutional investors. Cole-related entities now own and manage approximately 60 million square feet of commercial real estate in 47 states; the company has built up that portfolio conservatively and painstakingly, with a combination of discipline and purpose.
Playing the roulette wheel is not Cole’s style; it zeroes in on strong, stable cash flow. “We obviously have a very small box, focused primarily on single-tenant assets, so it’s hard to stray too much into other areas that have more risk,” relates Thomas W. Roberts, executive vice president and head of real estate investments at Cole. From 2010 to 2011, the Phoenix-based company acquired some $5 billion worth of assets net-leased to the credit-tenant likes of Walmart, PetSmart and the University of Phoenix, but its team also winnowed out many more potential deals through the underwriting process.
“They do a great job of executing on their business model, finding quality assets that can be relied on to provide long-term stable cash flow,” says Pat Duncan, CEO of USAA Real Estate in Dallas. “They’ll be patient; they’ll just wait for the properties that will meet their investment criteria and then they go for it. They’ve been one of the most sophisticated buyers that we’ve sold to over the past several years.” Duncan notes that Cole has another $200 million worth of deals under contract with his company, and adds that another Cole hallmark is speed and efficiency of execution once an acquisition is decided upon. “They don’t try to nickel-and-dime you; if there’s a major issue, they sit down at the table with you and try to figure it out.”
To read the rest of the story, go to the April 2012 issue of Real Estate Forum.
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