By Jon Peterson
New York City-based JEN Partners has an established target of $500 million capital raise for its latest residential land development financing fund that goes by the name of JEN Partners VII, according to a board meeting document from the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board.
One of the commingled fund’s targeted investment markets will be the Northern California region, which will include the Bay Area and Sacramento submarkets. JEN has a regional partner located in the region — Clifton Taylor work out of the company’s office located in Roseville, as stated on the manager’s website.
The Mass PRIM board meeting document mentions JEN Partners also because the pension fund recently approved a $100 million commitment into fund VII. This commingled fund has a general investment strategy of issuing short-duration financing targeting residential lot development opportunities across the United States. Other than Northern California, the fund’s other targeted markets include Texas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Maryland, Virginia and Colorado.
The transactions for the commingled fund will be with either land banking or repositioning that involves acquiring and working on partially entitled land. These assets would then be sold to single-family homebuilders once the land is ready for construction of homes.
There have been recent shifts in consumer preferences that have crated a severe shortage of single-family homes. This trend existed before the outbreak of COVID-19, and the pandemic has accelerated demand for this type of product across the country. A bigger portion of the population is now looking for single-family homes that can provide direct access to outdoor space and an interior room to accommodate working from home. The end result is that at the beginning of the third quarter of this year, there were 700,000 single-family homes that were listed for sale in the United States. This figure is down 50 percent from five years ago.
