Jay Sugarman, chairman and CEO of iStar (NYSE: STAR), participated in a video interview in conjunction with Nareit’s REITworld: 2021 Annual Conference.
Sugarman discussed a two-year strategy for iStar that the REIT announced at the beginning of 2021, intended to complete iStar’s transition to being a ground lease company.
“The ground lease business continues to grow in leaps and bounds,” Sugarman said. “We’ve made real progress streamlining the portfolio [and] we’ve had significant legacy asset sales at very good prices.”
Sugarman also detailed some of iStar’s ongoing goals, including reallocating resources from its legacy businesses into the modern ground lease industry. He added that iStar is working with Eastdil, a global real estate investment bank, to potentially explore selling the REIT’s net lease portfolio.
Sugarman said that iStar’s strong performance over the past year can be attributed to it being “both a deep-discount value stock and a high-growth, ‘see the future’ stock.”
“We’ve been able to do both, and I think that’s reflected in the shares this year,” he said.