Daryl Carter turned a $100,000 investment into one of the country’s largest African-American-owned real estate investment firms earlier this decade.
At his new venture,Irvine-based Avanath Capital Partners LLC,he’s starting with a much bigger checkbook.
Avanath’s looking at buying apartments, making commercial real estate loans and doing specialty finance.
Avanath and partner MacFarlane Costa Housing Partners LLC of Long Beach this month said they were buying 26,000 affordable-housing apartments from Denver’s Simpson Housing Solutions.
The portfolio includes 273 properties in more than 30 states. The majority of the buildings are in California. About 1,000 apartments are in Orange County, including in Buena Park, Fullerton, Orange and San Juan Capistrano.
“This is a great opportunity to buy existing apartments,” said Carter, who serves as chief executive of Avanath and is the majority shareholder of the company that started up in November. “There is never enough affordable housing.”
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. A conservative valuation of the apartments likely puts the portfolio more than $1 billion. Simpson Housing’s parent company, Simpson Housing LLLP, was valued at more than $2 billion in 2006.
Avanath has a 20% stake in the deal with MacFarlane Costa,a venture of Simpson Housing’s longtime president, Michael Costa, and San Francisco-based investment firm MacFarlane Partners LLC.
Avanath plans to exercise an option to acquire the remaining 80% stake in the portfolio later this year after it closes an investment fund, Carter said.
MacFarlane Costa would keep Simpson Housing’s development and financing arms.
For more on this story, see the June 16 edition of the Business Journal.
