An affiliate of KBS Realty Advisors LLC, the Newport Beach-based investment company led by Peter Bren and Chuck Schreiber Jr., is planning to start a real estate investment trust that could eventually raise up to $2.5 billion to buy office, industrial and retail buildings.
It would be the second big blind pool REIT with ties to Orange County to be offered this year.
Santa Ana-based Triple Net Properties LLC said in January it was forming a company to raise up to $1 billion from investors to buy apartments.
In the latest deal, KBS Real Estate Investment Trust Inc. said it hopes to sell as many as 280 million shares of common stock for the REIT, at $10 a share.
Rather than raising cash through a typical initial public stock offering, KBS REIT’s securities would be sold by brokers.
Shares wouldn’t trade publicly.
The company plans to buy properties in large metropolitan areas in the U.S. It has not identified any specific properties to acquire.
New Affiliate To Manage Fund
KBS Capital Markets Group, another newly created affiliate of KBS Realty, is set to manage the REIT.
Greg Brakovich is chief executive of KBS Capital Markets Group. He previously served as co-chief executive of MetLife Investors Group.
Also known as Koll Bren Schreiber Realty Advisors, KBS Realty is a venture of former Koll Development Co. executive Schreiber and Bren, the brother of The Irvine Company owner Donald Bren.
Bren is chairman of KBS Realty. Schreiber is chief executive.
The company, founded in 1992, has been involved in the investment in or management of more than $5 billion in real estate investments for institutional investors.
KBS Realty has been active in some big, local real estate deals of late.
It sold the two 10-story buildings that hold the headquarters of chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc. and spinoff Mindspeed Technologies Inc. near John Wayne Airport in Newport Beach. The price: $136 million.
KBS Realty bought the towers just a year earlier. It sold for a big profit to real estate investor and coin dealer John Saunders in a deal that’s set to close this month.
Both Peter Bren, 72, and Schreiber, 54, will serve as senior officers for KBS REIT.
KBS REIT is following the same game plan Triple Net used for its own blind pool REIT offering.
In January, an apartment investment trust with ties to Triple Net said it was trying to raise $1 billion from investors.
That trust,NNN Apartment REIT, also in Santa Ana,filed plans to offer 200,000 to 105 million shares in its offering.
NNN Apartment plans to go after apartments in some U.S. markets, according to regulatory filings. The REIT’s adviser is a unit of Triple Net.
Louis J. Rogers, NNN Apartment president and chairman, has served as president of Triple Net since 2004. Other executives come from Cornerstone Realty Income Trust, another REIT.
KBS Realty, meanwhile, opened offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco last year as its funds under management have grown.
The company also has an office in Boston.
