Secure Properties Appoints Kris Sanderson as Managing Director and Principal

One of the up-and-coming players in the triple net lease space has a new acquisitions chief. 

Secure Properties, a New York City-based real estate investment firm with more than 400 properties and $1.5 billion in assets, has hired Kris Sanderson to serve as its managing director and principal, where she will lead the firm’s national acquisitions and investment strategy across the net-lease sector, Commercial Observer can first report.

Sanderson comes over after spending nine years at Store Capital, where she served as a senior managing director. At Store Capital, Sanderson led a team that covered investments into 20 states and focused on acquiring single-tenant net-lease assets across 140 different industries. 

Brian Mansouri, chief investment officer and managing principal at Secure Properties, said in a statement that his firm has built a CRE investment foundation off securing “diverse and flexible sources of capital,” and that Sanderson’s vision and experience fits into his firm’s differentiated platform that spans retail, medical office space and industrial. 

“Kris is joining Secure at exactly the right moment in our growth,” said Mansouri. “That foundation now positions us to be increasingly creative, aggressive and disciplined in our acquisition strategy, and Kris is the ideal leader to help us capitalize on that opportunity.”

Sanderson told CO that Secure will look primarily for value-add opportunities with strong operators and sponsors, but the firm won’t be pigeon-holed into a limited approach. 

“The reason that I joined them is they have a platform that is both entrepreneurial and highly institutional, which is a compelling combination for operators and capital partners,” she said. “This market is changing so rapidly right now, and there’s no one size fits all that works.” 

Secure has carved out a niche for itself by using sale-leaseback deals to acquire triple-net-lease assets across the United States. A triple-net-lease acquisition allows a real estate investor like Secure to buy the underlying real estate of an asset, leaving the former owner in place as an operator responsible for paying property taxes, repair costs and insurance on the building. 

Sanderson explained that independent real estate owners engage in sale-leaseback deals with firms like Secure to generate immediate investment capital or to recapitalize balance sheets. 

“The theory behind it is it’s actually an arbitrage play for operators to fund growth,” said Sanderson, who argued most owners can’t tap into the full equity of their property until they sell. “You sell your building to Secure Properties, you get back your equity, and you use that to fund growth, and that could mean improving stronger technology or opening up more units.” 

Sanderson said she expects to harness the momentum the firm has generated since its 2020 founding and will scale the platform “exponentially.”

“To me, both the momentum and the culture positions the firm really well in the current marketplace to scale,” she said. “I’m excited to have the opportunity to do that for them.”

Brian Pascus can be reached at bpascus@commercialobserver.com.