Newport Beach-based real estate investor MIG Real Estate aims to step up commercial acquisitions and push its portfolio to well more than $500 million, with expansions into Texas, the Southeast U.S. and the Pacific Northwest.
The company, which also operates as Merage Investment Group Real Estate, last week announced plans to buy up to $600 million in properties this year. That would represent a big boost in volume for MIG Real Estate. The company has acquired about $400 million of properties since launching its real estate arm in mid-2009, with roughly half of its deals closing last year.
“We want to triple acquisition volume over 2011 (levels),” MIG Real Estate Chief Executive Greg Merage said.
Merage handles day-to-day operations for MIG Real Estate, the real estate arm of investment firm MIG Capital, also of Newport Beach.
Paul Merage, creator of Hot Pockets snack food and a University of California, Irvine, benefactor, is Greg Merage’s uncle and MIG Capital’s chairman.
MIG Capital and its affiliates have more than $1 billion in assets under management. Other company affiliates include a private-equity fund and an investment vehicle called MIG Absolute Return with more than $230 million in stock holdings as of last month, according to regulatory filings.
Greg Merage told the Business Journal in early 2010 that his company—which until last year operated as Stoneridge Capital Partners—eventually could buy upward of $1 billion of real estate assets, factoring in debt.
The company hasn’t said how it plans to fund its $600 million in deals this year, or if it is looking to sell existing buildings to finance some of those deals.
MIG Real Estate’s heightened deal-making plans for 2012 stem in part from an expectation of better pricing this year, as well as growth into new markets.
Until this year the bulk of the company’s deals were in California, Arizona, Colorado and Hawaii.
Notable acquisitions in Southern California include the $70 million buy of the Avila apartment complex in Rancho Santa Margarita in 2009, as well as the $56 million purchase of a four-property office complex in San Diego County that closed last summer.
Those markets are still a focus for MIG Real Estate, but the company now also has begun eyeing properties in Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Salt Lake City. MIG Real Estate last month acquired its first Seattle-area property, a 105,000-square-foot office building in suburban Bothell for a reported $16 million.
The company is also looking into properties in large Texas markets, such as Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, as well as in select Southeast markets where its primary focus will be multi-family properties and hotels.
Merage said MIG Real Estate has added some acquisitions staff to help deal-making in the Sun Belt area.
The company said its current real estate investment portfolio mix is about 33% office, 20% hotel, 24% multi-family properties and 23% retail centers. Its acquisitions during the past three years totaled 3 million square feet of commercial space.
