Shutterstock.
NEW YORK CITY- Time Equities, an investment management firm that owns 122 retail centers, including shopping centers, malls and street-front retail locations in 25 states, has reshuffled its staff to triage the asset management side of its business. The firm has seen an influx of requests for abatement and rent deferrals as of recent with the current coronavirus pandemic, Ami Ziff, director of national retail, tells GlobeSt.com.
"On the asset management side, our team is busy triaging leasing matters where tenants are asking for rent relief, some need it, some don't," Ziff said. "To give free rent to everyone, you'll go out of business and have to hand properties back to the lender. That's not the solution, so we have to handle each request individually."
The firm has not laid off any of its staff and has repurposed certain folks from its acquisition teams to focus more on asset management, Ziff said. He dealt with similar situations in his career during the 2008 Financial Crisis and emphasizes taking it one call, lease and mortgage at a time to come up with fair and equitable solutions that allow survival for all involved parties. And not all tenants are in the same predicament.
For instance, Ziff has learned that in some firm's real estate portfolios, grocery store tenants have had sales jump up over 100 percent since the start of the pandemic, and craft stores are up 75 percent, whereas some restaurants have shuttered altogether.
Time Equities has had an easier time managing the influx of tenant requests, which it attributes to its technological file management system that contains lease agreements, Argus and Microsoft Excel files. In addition, Ziff said prior to the crisis he would travel on an estimated four flights a week to consult with tenants, so continuing communication virtually through video chats on Zoom or Facetime hasn't been much of a big transition, he said.
According to a recent GlobeSt.com article, Time Equities has had a tradition of prioritizing its stakeholders' interests and will continue to work on a case by case basis to assess tenants needs. "We have a gigantic economic disruption [attributed to the coronavirus], the cost of which will have to spread across the economy. However, no one person, or one company, no one property owner can carry the need on their own shoulders," Francis Greenburger, chairman and CEO of Time Equities, told GlobeSt.com.
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.
Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
*May exclude premium content© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Mariah Brown
Mariah Brown is the New York Bureau Chief and Real Estate Reporter for GlobeSt.com, covering the New York Metro area, Northeast region and national real estate trends. She is responsible for producing multi-media content, including articles, podcasts and video. Before joining the GlobeSt team, she served as a New York Times fellow, reported for the Associated Press in New York and Philadelphia and several other New York City-based outlets.
