RVs and R&D

Shakiness in commercial real estate asset classes such as office and retail has investors scrambling for other options. Why not RV parks and campgrounds? Why not, indeed? A new $500 million fund is going after exactly that. Also, as the office market continues to struggle with high vacancies, a ray of hope shoots across the cloudy sky: demand for research and development space in urban areas.

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— Tom Acitelli, Co-Deputy Editor

Castle Park Partners Forms $500M Manufactured Housing JV

Castle Park Investments has formed a $500 million joint venture equity partnership targeting manufactured housing, recreational vehicle resorts and campground assets throughout the U.S., Commercial Observer can first report. Newmark arranged the JV with a team led by Jordan Roeschlaub and Dustin Stolly, alongside Eden Abraham. Roeschlaub said Castle Park is teaming up with a global private equity firm that couldn't be named yet. “Manufactured housing as an asset class is the only real estate sector that experienced positive earnings growth in the last two recessions while showing significant resilience during COVID-19,” Roeschlaub said in a statement. The JV was seeded by the acquisition of a more than 700-pad portfolio — a “pad” being the lot beneath a manufactured home — across markets in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Newmark is also arranging the financing for this transaction, but the debt dollar amount couldn’t immediately be ascertained.

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Research and Development Space to the Rescue?

It’s in SoMa, the South of Market Street neighborhood that divides San Francisco diagonally into its more residential and stately north end and its more commercial and grittier south end. Six stories, ground up, with wide windows offering a view beyond the mere streets surrounding it, into the future. In a national office market depressed over the possibility that hybrid and remote work might make good, old-fashioned urban offices obsolete, the development at 300 Kansas Street may be a little shining beacon signaling safety. San Francisco in particular could use a ray of hope. Office vacancy there stood at 24.1 percent by the end of 2022, according to Cushman & Wakefield, the highest it’s ever been since the brokerage began tracking it in 1996. A mere 43.5 percent of the Bay Area’s workers have returned to the office on a typical workday, according to security firm Kastle Systems, which tracks swipe-ins. That’s among the lowest of the 10 markets Kastle covers. The only metro areas lower were Philadelphia and nearby San Jose — like San Francisco, a tech-driven market. The national average was 50.1 percent.

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