John Kite, president and CEO of Kite Realty Group Trust (NYSE: KRG), joined REIT.com for a CEO Spotlight video interview at REITWorld 2012: NAREIT's Annual Convention for All Things REIT at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego.
Kite Realty Group focuses primarily on the development, construction, acquisition, ownership and operation of neighborhood and community shopping centers. The company owns interests in a portfolio of operating retail properties, retail properties under development, operating commercial properties, a related parking garage, commercial property under development and parcels of land that may be used for future development of retail or commercial properties. The company is headquartered in Indianapolis.
Kite discussed the performance of his company's development and redevelopment programs.
"It's one of the cornerstones of the company," Kite said. The firm currently has roughly $200 million of in-process development split up between two new developments and three redevelopments. Kite said the company has created "momentum" in its leasing on the projects.
"There's very little development going on in the country, so the fact that a company our size has about $200 million in process is a good thing for us," he said.
Kite also talked about the company's acquisition and sales targets.
"We try to go through the portfolio pretty consistently and think about where the growth lies and where it doesn't. I'd say the biggest characteristics of things we'd like to sell are centers or net lease properties that don't have much growth profile. Geography is also a factor there, where we'd like to tighten our geography a little bit. We've been pretty successful in selling at good numbers and redeploying the capital into new acquisition opportunities," Kite said. "The acquisitions have been in target markets that we like at attractive pricing. To us, it's all about getting the right price. So far, we've been able to buy shopping centers at well below replacement cost, which is one of the most important metrics to us. Right now, things are getting priced up pretty high, so we have to be careful around that."