LOS ANGELES-The net lease industry is as strong as ever due to dynamic changes that have taken place over the past 12 months, according to Paul McDowell, president of office, industrial and build-to-suit at American Realty Capital Properties. McDowell will share his industry expertise as a speaker on the Town Hall Meeting: State of the Industry panel at the upcoming Net Lease West conference. Moderated by Craig Tomlinson, senior director at Stan Johnson, the panel features industry experts Rick Chichester, president and CEO at Faris Lee Investments; Barclay G. Jones, III, EVP of investments at iStar Financial Inc.; Gino Sabatini, co-head of global investments at W.P. Carey; and Matt Tucker, managing director at the Gladstone Cos.

As an example of these changes, McDowell points to the recent $2.2 billion merger between CapLease and American Realty Capital Properties. “In under a year, Nick Schorsch has taken American Realty Capital Properties from a very small market cap net lease company to the largest publically traded net lease company,” he tells GlobeSt.com. Like other large cap net lease company's, ARCP has collected a very large portfolio of net lease assets that are migrating into public markets through mergers and acquisitions, McDowell adds.

On the panel, McDowell and the other industry panelists will weigh similar market transitions to reveal the state of the industry and the factors that have made the net lease industry such a strong investment sector. “We have seen this dramatic change in the market in just a year that has been coming slowly over the horizon,” McDowell says. “For a long time, net lease had sort of been classified as an 'other class.' It really wasn't it's own investment class, and now it has become so with the very, very fast growth of the non-traded REIT sector.”