David Schwartz’s Waterton Raises $1.7B for Multifamily Investment Fund
The fund has already deployed $100M of preferred equity and structured equity capital stack commitments since December 2022
By Brian Pascus September 16, 2024 3:41 pm
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David Schwartz’s real estate private equity firm Waterton closed nearly $2 billion in investment capital this month in anticipation of pouncing on distressed debt opportunities inherent in a dislocated commercial real estate market.
Schwartz, the chairman and CEO of Waterton, a Chicago-based firm with $10 billion assets under management, announced Monday his firm has closed $1.73 billion of equity commitments for Waterton Residential Property Venture XV, the firm’s 15th multifamily value-add fund since it opened in 1995.
Known as Venture XV, the fund will focus expressly on investing into distressed debt and value-add opportunities across the U.S. multifamily space. The firm plans to invest up to $5 billion into as many as 40 multifamily assets across several urban and suburban U.S. markets during the distress, according to details shared by Waterton.
“We expect to see significant opportunities in the multifamily sector as a result of the current, interest-rate-driven disruption and the near-term oversupply in certain markets with healthy longer-term fundamentals,” said Schwartz in a statement.
Venture XV has already been busy since the fund closed its first stream of equity commitments in December 2022.
The fund deployed capital into a 46-unit, high-rise residential property in the Loop, Chicago’s central business district, and also acquired multifamily communities in White Plains, N.Y., and in the Seattle suburbs along Lake Washington. The fund also invested a total of $100 million of mezzanine debt and securitized debt into different CRE capital stacks since then, as well.
Michelle Wells, managing partner of investor relations at Waterton, credited the firm’s fundraising to its successful relationships with repeat investors and a long track record of performance when making debt and equity investments into multifamily properties.
“We are so pleased with the impressive group of global institutional investors we have in the fund — both long-term and new partners — and look forward to continuing to invest in what is expected to be a compelling cycle,” said Wells in a statement.
Brian Pascus can be reached at bpascus@commericalobserver.com
