Backed by Big Data, One Company Pounds the Pavement Looking for Distressed Deals

With the quarantine limiting of Virtus Real Estate Capital’s new deal flow, the company is finding other ways to stay busy during COVID-19.

“We’ve been using this time to really circle back and optimize systems, policies, procedures, structure,” says Terrell Gates, CEO of Virtus.

Virtus’ research and analytics group is using big data to help guide operational and acquisition decisions. “We’ve doubled our efforts so that when we come out of this, we think we’re even more effective,” Gates says. “We’ve also been looking at what are new ways or maybe not so new, but different ways of potentially attacking the distress and general sourcing opportunity.”

Right now, Virtus sees transaction volume at record lows. It was only seeing transactions completed if they’re already “fully baked” with hard earnest money up and were being purchased with all cash or with debt from the lenders still lending, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If there are distressed transactions, it involves properties that had problems before the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the moment, the company is not seeing lenders move against borrowers on non-performing or under-performing loans. But as property performance and rent collections plummet across all property types, they are falling particularly hard in asset classes like retail, hospitality, and office.

As this is happening, Virtus is staying in contact with lenders and other partners to see where the opportunities for distress may be.

“One of the things that we’re starting to do more now is going directly to a lot of the debt funds and the warehouse loan providers as well as to the traditional long-term fixed-rate debt holders and seeing where we might be able to pick off opportunities,” Gates says.

Virtus has also reached out to several lenders. “They are having liquidity issues, and so we think that may end up yielding us some results,” Gates. “That’s something that is not so new, but it’s not something we’ve done a bunch of since the last downturn.”

Gates thinks the first his firm will see will be from its network. “They might be good assets, but they might suffer from supply issues, operational issues and now potentially a capital structure issue,” he says. “Our feeling is that even in these more resilient asset classes, COVID-19 could be the straw that broke the camel’s back or, more appropriately, the anvil that broke the camel’s back.”

Specifically, Gates sees opportunities in storage and seniors and student housing. “There is probably less of an opportunity in our other asset classes like health care, workforce housing and education,” he says. “We’ve also started to increase our outreach to those lenders, owners and borrowers with the expectation that we’re probably not doing a ton of transactions in the very first quarter of 2020. But you’ll probably see us do quite a bit in 2021 and 2022 as the music comes to a screeching halt for a lot of those owners.”