Dara Friedman

During a challenging year for commercial real estate investment due to slower capital flows, Dara Friedman found ways to stay active managing BGO’s portfolio.

In a heightened interest rate environment, Friedman’s team managed to sell assets in the the 4 to 5 percent cap rate range and buy in the 7 percent range while still generating 2 to 3 percent return premiums. 

“That was a result of taking difficult conditions and not sitting on our hands and waiting, but being proactive in the market and finding places within our own portfolio to create value in a liquidity-scarce environment,” Friedman said. “Our team was very proactive in a tough environment, so I’m really proud of what we executed on both the buy side and the sell side in the portfolio.”

Friedman, who is based in San Francisco and spends plenty of time in BGO’s L.A. office alongside her co-portfolio manager Jonathan Epstein, helped facilitate a number of transitions during the past year, including an off-market acquisition of a cold-storage asset near Miami International Airport leased to Sky Chef. BGO (formerly known as BentallGreenOak) also acquired  a life sciences property in San Diego leased to Roche.

The BGO portfolio under Friedman has leaned heavily toward the multifamily and industrial sectors of late with also a focus on a subsector of the office market involving flexible research & design properties. Friedman said the BGO portfolio team is also focusing heavily on cold storage, medical office properties and “infrastructure-oriented” CRE assets.

With interest rates now on track to trend downward, Friedman’s team is in a strong place after careful planning during the volatility of the last two years.

“When rates went up in 2022, we made a very conscious decision to both acquire new assets without leverage and not impute negative leverage,” she said. “We’ve  situated ourselves for a somewhere between 4 to 5 percent [interest rate] world and we were probably overly conservative there, but that’s upside to us.”