Corigin is a spinoff of Coalco New York, the American operation of the international real estate company Coalco Development of Moscow.
Interview conducted and condensed by Vivian Marino
Q You’re a lot younger than the average C.E.O. How do people you do business with react initially?
A It’s surprised them often, but so far no problems.
Q What does your job entail?
A A lot of it has to do with the strategic direction, which these days, in such a volatile global environment, becomes a larger role than it typically is. So I spend a lot of time allocating capital and resources toward what we think is going to be the best use of those and the highest return on dollars that we could put out over the next decade or so.
Q Your firm, under a different name, was once affiliated with the Russian company Coalco. Why the split?
A We were a subsidiary of Coalco — we ran all their real estate holdings in the U.S., and operated as Coalco New York.
Last year at this time we decided to spin off from Coalco, and took some other domestic holdings here and aggregated everything and restructured under Corigin Holdings. We just wanted to be a little more efficient in the size of our operation. They’re still invested in some of our legacy projects, but we’re now separate companies.
Q What projects are you working on?
A Our development group has two active projects: Brynwood Golf and Country Club in Westchester and Canco Lofts in Jersey City.
Our multifamily group has been very busy. It made a few acquisitions this year on the smaller side, and there’s a large transaction in the works right now. That group has been focusing on sub-$20 million multifamily assets in Manhattan. And there’s a few debt transactions that we’ve taken down — one of them is 71 Clinton Street.
Q Let’s follow up first with the Canco Lofts.
A We’ve completed the first phase, which is 200 residential unit lofts. We are about 70 percent sold. The price is just north of $400 a foot on a typical deal there. We’re planning the next phase there right now — another 100 condo units. We’ll probably complete that process early to mid- next year.
Q Will you be doing anything differently in the second phase?
A We’re changing the unit layouts a little, but we haven’t set pricing. Some of the small one-bedrooms in the first phase absorbed a lot faster, and so we may put out more smaller units than we had planned. That’s the beauty of a phased project: you get to take advantage of what worked best in the first phases and continue to do that throughout.
Q Tell me about 71 Clinton.
A It’s a new acquisition. We own the debt. That debt is in a foreclosure proceeding, and we’re taking over that position from the bank.
Q So if the property is foreclosed on, you get the building.
A Exactly. It’s a very simple multifamily apartment building, so it would just be kept that way.
Q Switching gears, you decided early this year to get into the lending business.
A It’s almost a year now. We’ve had four successful transactions, of which three have paid off thus far — we loaned the capital, it met their bridge finance needs and we’ve gotten our money back. The average loan size is just under $10 million.
Q What kind of interest rates are you charging?
A It really depends on the transaction, but they’re higher than traditional banking rates. They’ll start in the double digits.
Q Where are you getting the capital to lend out?
A Thus far it’s all been our own capital. We have a good asset base here — we have a large student housing portfolio, the N.Y.U. portfolio — and that throws off a good deal of cash flow.
Q Is student housing your biggest income source?
A We call it the foundation of our operation. We have 715 units; we house 2,400 students; and we handle all the property management in-house.
Q You must have some stories to tell about these tenants.
A Oh, yeah. They require a bit more management than other tenants, and maintenance. There are plenty of things happening in the year. We have an occasional fire every few months for whatever reason, and there are a few other incidents that probably aren’t appropriate for print.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7869e80753112c0a13906d136e82d2be
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