Glencrest Group aims to deliver top-tier investor returns by maximizing the experience of our residents, community and colleagues.
We wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year and acknowledge the efforts of those who helped further our momentum in 2020.
Investors
We are thrilled to have launched our Generations program in 2020; this program is designed to provide individual investors long-term ownership of great apartment communities with an attractive combination of current yield, equity appreciation, and income tax advantage. Our Generations investor network grew from a standing start to more than 100 families - many of whom were referred to us by existing investors after participation in just a single project.
We closed two Generations acquisitions this year - Briggs Village Apartments in Olympia, WA and Laurel Creek Apartments in Fairfield, CA. We removed contingencies on a third, which will establish our presence in the Portland, OR market in early January.
Glencrest enters 2021 with a portfolio of five quality multifamily assets across three states and two investment programs. We think this is an outstanding result for a company that is less than two years old and provides a great foundation for further growth next year.
We would like to thank the Pacific Northwest multifamily team from CBRE, the Northern California team from IPA, and the JLL and CBRE multifamily capital markets teams for their exceptional support closing these transactions in spite of considerable market volatility.
Residents
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic made 2020 a challenging year for many of our residents. We worked hard to find creative ways to help those struggling to make rent payments and will continue to do so. Housing is a fundamental human need and we hope that our approach to the multifamily business makes a positive difference in the lives of those who choose to call a Glencrest community home.
Our property management partner, FPI, did a terrific job of building, implementing and evolving processes to help keep our residents and site teams as safe as possible last year and we deeply appreciate their leadership and tireless execution in service of delivering the best resident experience possible given the circumstances.
While it’s difficult to reliably benchmark performance, we believe that our portfolio has performed at or slightly above our peer group in terms of collections and occupancy in each of the markets where we operate, providing positive feedback about resident experience.
Colleagues
We could not have grown our portfolio without growing our team.
Stacey Street began her multifamily career managing for Essex Property Trust and Equity Residential but has now transitioned into a financial analyst role upon whom we rely for too much to mention here.
Jeff Leon is a veteran real estate investor who has had great success in multiple environments over the past 30 years and contributed to building the Generations network in many valuable ways last year.
Jeff and Stacey exemplify the kind of people that will help Glencrest deliver the next generation of multifamily investment opportunity and we deeply appreciate their ongoing contributions and willingness to vote us onto their teams each day.
Community
In addition to investor returns and resident experience, we are committed to leadership from a sustainability perspective as well. We are proud that Briggs Village is a Green Globe building and are committed, through the Green Up program with our lender, Freddie Mac, to reduce energy and water consumption at Laurel Creek Apartment by at least 15% (each) within two years.
There’s lots more work to do in this area but we are excited to have baked sustainability into our business plans from the very start of our Generations program.
Looking forward to 2021
We are hopeful that next year will look very different than 2020 in many ways - most notably that the broad availability of vaccinations will reduce and then stop the spread of COVID-19, allowing a gradual and deliberate return to normal.
For our team, we’re focused on a few key objectives:
Investors
Grow our Generations network substantially
Close on 4 - 6 great apartment communities across our Generations and Opportunity programs
Deliver performance in line with or better than our business plans
Residents
Continue to work with our residents to find solutions that meet the cash flow needs of the community while minimizing impact on their families
Implement a first version of resident experience measurement so we can better track the impact of the operations and capital improvement decisions we make
Maintain market-leading occupancy and rents, the ultimate test of the value of the experience we deliver
Colleagues
Add 2 - 3 critical team members to help us meet the demands of our growing business
Continue to codify and evolve our company values to ensure we’re building the kind of organization where people choose to build a rewarding career
Community
Implement a first version sustainability scorecard for our communities
Measure and report on progress against stated sustainability objectives in existing communities
As 2020 draws to a close, our dominant feeling is gratitude - for the resilience of our industry, for our strong and expanding team and investor base and for the growth we saw this year and the prospect for more in 2021.
All the best,
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