Opportunity. Execution. Value Creation.

Phoenix Investors (“Phoenix”) is private real estate company established in 1994.  Our senior leadership and advisors have over twenty-five years of experience in successfully acquiring, managing and operating commercial real estate from coast to coast.  This experience allows Phoenix to identify opportunities and apply its highly disciplined investment strategy focused on risk/reward metrics during acquisition. By reducing downside risks, we simultaneously enhance the potential for substantial value creation during the execution phases. This creates investment value and returns in excess of industry norms for our transactions – many of which have unique characteristics and solutions not envisioned by competitors.

Our substantial experience allows our management team to analyze acquisitions from all perspectives and from different scenarios, including:

• Distressed. We understand all forms, whether (1) borrower distress due to over-leverage, tax liability issues, or personal guarantees; (2) lender distress, including the need for portfolio sales and/or note sales; or (3) property distress where capital improvements are needed and related costs must be properly evaluated.
• Portfolio Repositioning.  We understand that traditional concepts and solutions typically used over the last five, ten or fifteen years may not be optimal today.  We seek to find the proper and, sometimes, creative solutions to help corporations dispose of their excess real estate, whether structuring a sale-leaseback transaction for an operating facility or acquiring a former, single-tenanted industrial plant with environmental issues.
• Trend Driven.  We are adept at identifying underlying themes and nuances that cause changes in the micro and macro marketplaces and drive value creation. For example, we can identify and evaluate single tenant net-leased transactions when the market has mispriced the tenant credit risk or fundamentals of the underlying real estate.  Further, we can identify and evaluate underserved and over-served retail and industrial markets to target where best to acquire properties. We also identify and evaluate  properties that may be vulnerable to direct competition and exterior forces such as internet commerce.   And finally, we understand the challenges and benefits of various property types in a dynamically changing economy.

Experience. Stability. Fiduciary Responsibility.

In 1991, Frank P. Crivello created two private trusts, Irrevocable Children’s Trust and Irrevocable Children’s Trust No.2 (the “Trusts”), for the benefit of his children, Joseph and Anthony Crivello.  Later that year, with the contribution of David Marks, the Trusts became the majority owner of First Berkshire Business Trust, which completed Wall Street’s first single-tenant, retail property-backed securitized financing. That transaction, secured by 43 Kmart retail locations and warehouse stores, became a precursor for CMBS structures commonly used over the last twenty years.

In 1994, David Marks became Trustee for the Trusts, and Phoenix Investors was created as the management company of the Trusts’ investments.  Today, the Trusts are the upstream owner of a portfolio of limited liability company real estate subsidiaries managed by Phoenix Investors.

Throughout the 1990s, Phoenix Investors and affiliates of the Trusts were focused primarily on single-tenant arbitrage opportunities available across the country. To this end, Phoenix Investors leveraged various market inefficiencies, including: (1) deal exposure that was generally limited to local markets (unlike today, where the internet allows for broad dissemination of information at low cost); (2) differences in credit market perceptions of unrated regional and national tenants versus investment-grade rated tenants with similar lease structures and cash flows; and (3) innovative Wall Street financings that relied on informed, deal-specific ratings that were completed to exploit these inefficiencies.

From 2002 to the beginning of the economic crash in 2007, our management team concluded that most prevailing real estate opportunities and trends did not meet the disciplined risk/reward analysis required by Phoenix. Accordingly, real estate acquisitions for the Trusts during this time were kept to a minimum while our management team focused on our existing portfolio.

Since the economic crash, Phoenix has aggressively used its experience to source, identify and harvest opportunities that have met required risk/reward metrics. Many of these opportunities have been found to be as attractive as any we have ever seen. Currently, our focus is on maximizing forms of distress, working with corporations, banks, and institutions on portfolio dispositions, as well as the underappreciated markets for Class B and C industrial properties and portfolios.

Looking forward, Phoenix will continue applying its disciplined investment strategy to commercial real estate opportunities while implementing new technologies and adding resources.

To successfully identify and execute opportunities in a dynamic and changing marketplace, we will add to our human capital across our management and operations teams. The Trust beneficiaries, Joseph and Anthony Crivello, who have grown up around our business, are poised to join the next generation of executives who will utilize cutting-edge information technology resources and tools to enhance our research capabilities and bring greater efficiencies and cost savings to our operations. Our teams have been critical to our success to date and will propel Phoenix to meet the challenges presented in the coming decades.