Equus Capital Partners Ltd. has closed on a $310 million real estate investment fund.

Equus Capital developed 1000 Continental Drive with a previous fund. It just closed a $310 million real estate fund.

This is the ninth such fund the Philadelphia firm has raised. Over the last 20 years, the company has pooled together close to $3 billion in real estate funds.

Though Equus has ramped up the amount of money it has raised for each of its previous funds — the firm’s eighth totaled $850 million — it decided not to go as big with this one.

“We went smaller because we wanted to get the money out faster,” said Daniel M. DiLella, president and chief executive officer at Equus Capital.

The money will be deployed over two years and within the current economic cycle rather than over a four-year period, he said, adding that this approach appealed to its investors.

Equus has already invested $83 million of the fund and bought nine properties.

“It’s doing really well,” DiLella said. “The hard part is finding deals.”

There’s a lot of equity and debt in the market and investors have scoured top-tier markets, such as New York and Washington D.C., for deals and high returns. As yields have dropped in those markets, investors have sought out real estate in the next level of cities, where good deals are now getting more difficult to find.

For this ninth fund, Equus initially set a goal of raising $250 million but investor interest ran high, DiLella said. The firm decided to cap it at $310 million.

A third of its investors had been involved in other Equus funds and about 60 percent are new and include large public pension funds, high-networth individuals, university endowments, Taft-Hartley plans, among others. As it has with its previous funds, Equus will look to buy value-add office, multifamily, industrial and retail investments throughout the United States.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal