Impact Investing in Real Estate: Developing Communities for Florida's Workforce Housing
Most real estate development companies are building either high end, luxury housing or affordable (low income) housing. Land prices and building materials are fixed costs regardless of what type of housing is being developed, hence market rate developers must seek market rents and affordable housing developers rely on tax credits to justify the investment. We have differentiated ourselves from most development companies as we have carved out a niche developing attainable priced housing to class A standards. We focus on a large segment of the population that we refer to as the “missing middle.” Our tenants are government employees, teachers, nurses, first responders, paralegals and other members of the workforce earning around their area median income. This segment of the population is often either severely cost burdened because a large percentage of their income is devoted to rent, forced to commute or live in substandard housing. We leverage our public finance expertise in order to work with local government agencies on incentive packages that bridge the gap and reduce our basis which intern allows us to generate a market return to our investors.
- Most development companies focus on either luxury or affordable (low income) housing. We focus on developing attainably priced workforce housing to class A standards.
- South Florida is ground zero for the workforce housing crisis with more cost burned tenets than anywhere else in the country.
- Workforce housing is a defensive investment and a resilient asset class that can yield excellent risk adjusted returns due to the supply demand imbalance that exists in many metro areas.
- We target high cost areas with significant barriers to entry located near employment centers, transportation nodes and other city amenities.
- Most investors gain exposure to workforce housing through an acquisitions model, essentially purchasing B and C property. We leverage local incentives to construct class A property at class B rents.
Event Recording
Real Estate Impact Investing Developing Communities for Florida’s Workforce
Speaker
Nick Rojo
- Title
- Co-Founder and President @
- Company
- Affiliated Development
- Role
- Speaker
Nick Rojo is the Co-Founder and President of Affiliated Development. Mr. Rojo has more than 14 years of experience in the acquisition, finance, management, rehabilitation and development of residential and commercial real estate. Nick is a South Florida native and got his start in the real estate industry in 2006 as an investment banker at Wachovia Securities, where he focused on providing capital raising and advisory services to public and private homebuilders and developers. Nick gained experience working on a variety of transactions from traditional investment banking to real estate asset-specific transactions, and was afforded the unique benefit of structuring financings at the peak of the market cycle and then working with clients to restructure during the great recession. He left Wachovia to return to South Florida in 2009 to opportunistically acquire property at the height of the recession.
About
Affiliated Development
Affiliated Development (“Affiliated”) is a regional real estate development and investment company headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with offices in West Palm Beach, Florida. The company was formed as a mission-based organization with the goal of building mixed-use multifamily developments to target unmet demand and underserved areas within the market. Affiliated works directly with communities to improve the quality and sustainability of housing stock for residents, resulting in the development of Class A luxury apartments at attainable rates. The greatest housing need in South Florida and many other metro areas is for quality workforce housing. Affiliated is addressing the demand by utilizing various public finance tools in order to bridge the gap and develop Class A housing at Class B rents. The Affiliated team has a track record of partnering with government agencies, community organizations and nonprofits, and has extensive experience in private and public finance, including TIF, TID, NID, LIHTC, tax exempt bond finance, HUD finance, CRA lending, agency finance, CMBA and local municipal finance. Affiliated’s pioneering efforts have reshaped communities and resulted in over $750M of investment nationwide.