Investment Strategy
Long Wharf employs an opportunistic approach to value-added investing that targets opportunities across a wide array of markets and sectors. The group principally focuses on acquiring assets at discounts to replacement cost and comparable sales in primary and secondary markets that offer the opportunity to increase returns through the execution of a value-enhancement strategy. In particular, Long Wharf targets opportunities that offer an attractive unlevered stabilized return on cost, where the potential total return is driven by stabilizing and improving a property’s operations, as opposed to relying on trends in the broader capital markets.
Long Wharf utilizes a diverse set of individual strategies, each of which require a combination of capital and real estate expertise. These strategies include distress – acquiring well-located but operationally impaired assets with distressed capital structures; rehabilitation – renovating functionally obsolete but well-located assets; management turnaround – applying aggressive management and leasing programs to previously neglected assets; and development – selectively capitalizing on unique sites by creating space that is justified economically by local supply and demand imbalances. Importantly, Long Wharf has extensive experience executing each of these strategies.
Over time, all major asset classes, including real estate, have become increasingly dynamic and to a certain degree more efficient. Capital is flowing to opportunities more quickly, making the ability to recognize an attractive mispricing of risk and the flexibility to engage in transactions beyond a narrowly defined focus especially critical in the current market environment. Long Wharf’s experience accessing and ascertaining these opportunities is an important advantage for its funds.