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Booming demand from SA investors brings pressure onto Orbvest’s US property acquisitors

Wealth Migrate

2019-07-30

Our trusted partner, OrbVest, has recently been in the news. Read the article below. To view OrbVest’s currently offerings, go to our platform and sign up/log in.

South Africans who are actively seeking offshore portfolio diversification have warmed to the niche-focused entrepreneurs who are building Orbvest into a billion dollar powerhouse. They are taking experiences learned in the specialised SA’s medical property sector and applying them in the US market, with CEO Martin Freeman having relocated there. The latest development, their 22nd, was oversubscribed, with the excess being allocated to the 23rd project described in this interview by director of operations, Justin Clarke. He was interviewed on this week’s episode of Personal Finance Live. – Alec Hogg

Listen to the podcast here: https://omny.fm/shows/biznews-radio/booming-demand-from-sa-investors-brings-pressure-o

We’re talking about property today and particularly investing in property in the international arena. Justin Clarke is one of the partners at Orbvest. Those of you who’ve been following Biznews, will notice that we’ve been giving a bit of attention to Orbvest for very good reasons. A group of entrepreneurs who got together, had their own money, decided they wanted to invest offshore, started in the area that they understood in the United States and now they’re onto project Number 23. I don’t want to steal too much of Justin’s thunder… Justin from the information you sent me in preparation for this discussion, you said that you closed off what is called Glen Ridge Medical 22. What exactly was that and why did you close it off?

Thanks for having me on this afternoon. It’s great chatting to you and your audience. We started five years ago and it took us a long time to close off these investments. It was difficult to establish trust with new investors. I think that we’re now getting to that tipping point where we are listing a project, which actually closes within a very short period of time. We have a regular following of investors and the word is now starting to spread. So the short story is Med 22 was a huge success. We actually listed it yesterday. What that means is that the investors all move their money and we were able to list the property on the exchange and then the money would flow through to the actual company that does the transaction in the US. So yes, it’s happening at fantastic speed at the moment.

Just unpack for those who perhaps didn’t follow the story. What exactly do you focus on in the United States?

You touched on it earlier. The problem that we were trying to solve is where to invest in something that is tangible and that is recession resistant. Yes, you can invest offshore in a fund but you don’t necessarily know what’s happening behind the skirt. We do have a property focus, my background is very much in property, as are some of my colleagues. We decided that the US, and the US economy is still pumping and it’s an economy that we understand. Then we looked at what category to invest in. There are a number of different opportunities in the States. We know that some of them are under pressure like retail real estate but this medical thing – we have some IP, my partner Hennie Bezuidenhout has been doing it in South Africa for many years, as you mentioned and it is very recession resistant. We decided to get a hyper-focus on this particular category. So what it means is that we find these buildings in the US, in states and cities th