US President Donald Trump’s trade wars have not scared away residential sharpshooter S2 Capital from an expansion into the logistics market.
The Dallas-based multifamily investment manager has acquired Fort Capital, a Sun Belt industrial specialist with an 11 million-square-foot portfolio and 50-person investment team. “The continued rapid growth of e-commerce, combined with rising transportation costs, is driving the need for proximity to consumers,” S2 founder and chief executive Scott Everett told PERE of the firm’s decision to enter the logistics sector.
As part of S2, the platform will continue its focus on acquiring and managing value-add and core-plus industrial assets in high-growth markets across the US, with an emphasis on shallow-bay infill industrial.
“We are believers that nearshoring trends were present prior to [tariffs] and will continue to be a big factor, as well as the desire to scale delivery in urban infill locations in high-growth MSAs,” said Everett. “We also feel industrial has reached a bottoming in pricing similar to residential and the next five years are a great opportunity for both.”
S2 has hired Chris Roach to serve as president of the new vertical and Parker McCormack as CIO. Roach was most recently CEO of BBG, a Dallas-based real estate valuation and appraisal firm that was placed “under review” by Freddie Mac, The Real Deal reported.
McCormack comes from JLL, where he served as a senior director of Americas capital markets for the past four years. Fort Capital founder Chris Powers will remain for six months after the acquisition as an adviser, but will not be staying with the firm on a permanent basis.
Roach said his goal is to build an industrial platform that matches the scale of S2’s 50,000 multifamily units. S2 and Fort Capital began mulling a deal at the end of last year, according to Everett.
“We initially tried to buy a different platform,” he said, adding that the firm had sought a purchase that would “achieve scale with an experienced vertically integrated platform.”
“That led us to Fort Capital, given Chris Powers and I have known each other for 10 years,” he continued.
The acquisition comes a few weeks after the close of S2’s second property fund, S2 Real Estate Fund II, on $373 million in commitments, short of its $600 million target.
Patrick Connell, S2’s head of capital formation and investor relations, said at the time that the lower total was the result of slow private markets distributions for existing investors, which have been inhibited from re-upping in new vintages.
“It’s definitely a better time to be buying than selling today,” Connell told PERE.