Michael Shine & Partners Law Office and MSA Shine Global Family Office Ltd. have closed a $57 million real estate deal in Atlanta, Georgia. The firms bought nine multifamily complexes with 1,100 apartments in the city.
Adv. Alon Shine, who manages the Shine group’s financial arm, said, “This is a strategic move to gain a foothold in the US housing market when market prices are low, following the sub-prime crisis in 2008. In principle, if you buy at a good price, in a good location, and with good management, you can definitely report a gain on income-producing properties. Even now, despite the rise in real estate prices in the US, prices are still low, and this is an excellent time to acquire such an attractive asset.
“Most of the properties that the Shine group has bought in the past few years were purchased directly from banks, which had foreclosed on the properties when their owners became insolvent. This is a key point in investments of this kind, because banks do not know how to manage multifamily buildings, and even cause the value of the properties they manage to decline. The banks prefer to sell these properties, even at a painful loss. This is where investment groups like us come into the picture ‘seizing’ opportunities of this kind.”
Shine added, “The US housing market continues to improve, and this can also be seen in major differences in the prices and yields of our deals, if you compare the deals we made in 2010 with the deals in 2013.” He said that the focus on Atlanta was because of familiarity with the city, which made good management possible.
As part of the deal, the Shine group obtained the right to build hundreds of apartments, which should boost the gain to over 20%.
