Waypoint Residential Seals $103M Fund Following $1.9B in Investment Activity
Waypoint Residential has closed its subsidiary’s inaugural closed-end commingled fund with $103 million in Fund I equity, Commercial Observer has learned.
The company completed $1.94 billion in total investment activity across the U.S in 2021, including $661 million from 10 acquisitions and $1.28 billion from 23 sales.
The capital from Fund 1 will be used to invest in “strategic” multifamily investments in the Sun Belt, an area that Waypoint said in a release it anticipates “a longer-term housing boom accelerated by the pandemic and residential migrations.”
Since Waypoint was founded in 2011, it invested about $5 billion in more than 31,000 apartments and sold 77 properties that generated more than $3.2 billion.
“I am proud of what we have accomplished in our first decade,” said Scott Lawlor, CEO and general partner of Waypoint. “Investing is always challenging, and this has recently been underscored by the unprecedented economic challenges presented by the pandemic. The key to our continued success is having a strong team of experienced, aligned, empowered and motivated people. I am excited by our current team’s ability to continue expanding our history of excellent client service and investment returns.”
Waypoint is now trying to raise $200 million in equity for a new fund, Waypoint Strategic Sunbelt Apartments Fund II, which continue to target the Sun Belt region, according to a release. The second fund aims to attract “both midsized institutional and private investors,” which Waypoint said in a release “historically had limited opportunities to invest” in these kinds of assets.
“Larger institutional investors have been able to gain exposure to development by partnering with merchant builders while private capital has often invested through syndications,” said Reagan Pratt, head of capital markets for Waypoint. “There has been a gap in the investment market, forcing mid-sized institutional investors and private capital either to forgo development altogether or accept asset concentration risk to gain exposure to multifamily development. Fund II fills a tremendous void, as investors will be investing alongside an experienced, diversified, vertically integrated developer, while avoiding the allocator-operator dual fee double promote structure common elsewhere in the market in allocator funds.”
Update: This story originally misattributed source material. This has been corrected. We apologize for the error.
Emily Fu can be reached at efu@commercialobserver.com.
