Fortress could sell resi lender CoreVest for $400M

Fortress acquired the firm formerly known as Colony American Finance shortly before SoftBank's acquisition of Fortress

Fortress co-CEO Wes Edens and CoreVest CEO Beth O'Brien (Credit: Getty Images, iStock)
Fortress co-CEO Wes Edens and CoreVest CEO Beth O'Brien (Credit: Getty Images, iStock)

Fortress Investment Group is considering a sale of CoreVest, a residential real estate lender that it acquired in 2017.

SoftBank-owned Fortress is “exploring strategic options including a sale” of Irvine, California-based CoreVest, Bloomberg reported. Sources told the outlet that the lender could be valued at $400 million or more.

The firm offers short-term credit lines, bridge financing and loans on both portfolios and single properties. It claims to have closed more than $5 billion in loans across 35,000 properties since its founding in 2014, amid a wave of institutional investment in single-family rentals that followed the housing crisis.

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The company, formerly known as Colony American Finance, was originally the “single-family lending unit” of Colony American Homes, the rental unit of Trump pal Thomas Barrack‘s Colony Capital.

Fortress, a New York-based private equity firm, rebranded the company as CoreVest after acquiring it for an undisclosed sum in July 2017 — about the same time Softbank was in the process of buying Fortress in a $3.3 billion deal.

Fortress is an active investor in real estate worldwide, and was recently reported to be the largest private rental landlord in Japan. [Bloomberg] — Kevin Sun