Another
real estate firm is migrating to Philadelphia with an eye toward opening up an
office this year.
Walker
& Dunlop, which finances multifamily acquisitions and development
through Fannie
Mae and Freddie
Mac, also has an investment sales division that it is growing and
Philadelphia is on its list of cities it wants to venture into.
“It’s a market we have had our eye on,” said Chris
Doerr, managing director of the investment sales division of Walker &
Dunlop.
“Five
years ago, there wasn’t a huge reason to go up there because 95 percent of the
deals were institutional and there just weren’t a lot of them there. That has
changed.”
Interest
from institutional players is on the rise in Philadelphia because of several
factors, he said. It comes from the city becoming a place where people want to
live in spite of its modest job growth. Investors have also found they can find
more value here compared with some other gateway cities, such as New York,
Washington D.C., or Boston, where prices are high and yields are low. In
addition, compared with other cities, it doesn’t appear Philadelphia is getting
over built, he said.
“Philadelphia
has a good story,” Doerr said.
Doerr
knows Philadelphia well.
He
grew up in the Huntingdon Valley, Pa., area and vacationed at the Jersey Shore,
where he still goes now with his family even though he lives in northern Virginia.
For years, he was with Cushman
& Wakefield where he was in charge of institutional multifamily
investments throughout the Washington D.C. region. Doerr joined Walker &
Dunlop to spearhead its effort to expand its presence throughout the
Mid-Atlantic selling and financing multifamily projects.
He
expects to open an office here over the next 12 months and has already started
to approach some brokers at area firms but declined to name names. Walker &
Dunlop will join a bevy of other commercial real estate firms that have entered
the Philadelphia market in recent years.
Source: Philadelphia
Business Journal
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