Jonathan Rose Companies has raised $233 million through a real estate fund dedicated to affordable housing.
Roughly 125 investors, including Deutsche Bank AG’s Community Development Finance Group, the Ford Foundation and an affiliate of Nuveen, have made commitments to the fund, the Wall Street Journal reported. The fund, dubbed the Rose Housing Preservation Fund IV L.P., has already logged $64 million in equity investments, including stakes in more than 3,300 affordable housing units. The fund will acquire, preserve and renovate affordable housing.
Affordable housing is an increasingly attractive asset type, as demand for low-income apartments remains high and the luxury market cools.
“Real estate developers are turning from luxury apartments and are eyeing this investment class, buying up a lot of units, repositioning and putting them out as market-rate units,” Rebecca Regan of the Housing Partnership Network told the Journal.
Rose’s firm has been a very active player in the city’s affordable housing market. In February, the city tapped Jonathan Rose Companies to build a 751,000-square-foot mixed-use development in East Harlem. The company will be working alongside L+M Development Partners on the project, which will include 262 permanently affordable apartments and 79 units for senior citizens.
The following month, the company purchased Forest City Realty Trust’s affordable housing business for $500 million. [WSJ] — Kathryn Brenzel
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of permanently affordable units at an East Harlem project. The number of units recently changed to 262.