Noyack Medical's CJ Follini

While some companies are pulling back, New York City-based Noyack Medical Partners LLC is doing just the opposite. The medical-office owner of five assets in the Northeast and Midwest is actively looking to buy more. Additionally, Noyack is in a joint venture to develop a $250-million facility that will be home to medical offices and senior housing. CJ Follini, Noyack’s managing member, recently spoke with GlobeSt.com about his firm and its niche in this interesting sector of the commercial real estate world.

GlobeSt.com: Is it a better market for acquisitions during this downturn?

Follini: There’s been a lot of opportunity. We’ve been focused on medical office since I put together the strategy in 2001. Right after the crash and the dot-com silliness, we decided to focus on a relatively stable, cash-producing real estate asset class. After doing the analysis of many different asset classes, such as storage and student housing, all of which are good, I chose medical office. I put together a little strategy, and we’ve followed it ever since. In many of the recent years, with all of the free money, there were a lot of casual players in the marketplace who may not have been medical office property businesses. They’ll come in, get a 95% loan-to-value, offer an unrealistic purchase price, and get that property. Many of those, expectedly, are coming back to the market because those were improper purchase prices. We follow a very-disciplined approach, and unfortunately, in the era of free money, we weren’t as lucky as some. Now the market has come back to sanity, and we are at the forefront. Right now we’re getting a contract for a $45-million building in Pittsburgh. We are going to contract on a $13-million office condominium in Manhattan. There are many more deals that are being transacted with realistic value, 25% or 30% equity, property pricing, and those kinds of things.