Amy Tait, chairman and CEO of Broadstone Net Lease Inc., joined REIT.com for a CEO Spotlight video interview at NAREIT’s Washington Leadership Forum.
Tait reflected on the evolution of Broadstone since the company began acquiring net lease properties in 2006. She said that in the last six years, Broadstone has witnessed consistent growth.
“We have grown every quarter, and out of the last 26 quarters, we have bought triple net lease properties in 25 of those quarters,” she said. “We are constantly in the market and growing to the point where we now have 173 properties in 26 states. We’re very well-diversified between medical office, retail and industrial properties.”
However, Tait added that one of the primary challenges for the company is to continue to raise capital to fund the company’s growth. Last year Broadstone raised about $100 million to help fund roughly $275 million worth of new property acquisitions. Tait admitted that there’s always uncertainty about what’s going to happen in the next quarter or the next month.
“We do not have a broker dealer network that raises funds for us and we’re not really a typical institutional structure or asset class. We really rely on our shareholders and high net worth investors to come to us. Fortunately, we have over 600 shareholders," she said.
When it comes to opportunities, Tait said that they are “phenomenal.” She said the current environment presents the greatest opportunities to make accretive acquisitions that the company has ever seen.
“The reason for that is that cap rates have compressed a little bit, maybe back to pre-recession levels, but our interest rates and our cost of capital are probably 200 to 300 basis points lower than they were before the rescission. So, we can lock in very accretive acquisitions, and that’s what we’re focused on doing.
Tait also discussed the launch of Broadtree Homes, a REIT that focuses on the single-family rental market. During the housing crisis that helped touch off the global economic slowdown, Tait said she realized that investors could play a role in the recovery by purchasing the excess inventory of single-family homes.