How can we even address the past year without first touching on COVID-19? The pandemic magnified an ongoing shift away from expensive “big city” markets and toward smaller, more affordable ones. Though the pandemic has touched every state and city, its impact on US property markets and sectors showed significant and marked differences.
Even with the ongoing pandemic, there were a number of private real estate sectors that made great rebounds, or even thrived, last year. While we saw most retail properties slide – with staffing difficulties, store closings, and higher vacancies – there were a select handful of exceptions, namely grocery-anchored centers, dollar stores, and home improvement retailers, which did remarkably well. While many wrote off the entire sector completely, we were able to capture that growing market and the resulting stable cash flows for our investors, in the BENA Capital Premier Fund.
The multifamily housing sector barely paused, and we were pleased to distribute cash dividends to our investors every single quarter since the Fund’s inception. We purchase each of our properties with careful analysis of proximity to demand generators, strong tenant demand, and robust investment activity in the immediate vicinity, and we continually monitor each market to capitalize on peak selling opportunities.
This month, we are pleased to announce the successful sale of one of our Mosaic Fund portfolio properties in Lexington, KY. Despite the challenges with COVID over the past two years, the Lexington market has exhibited several months of historically low inventory, aggressive bidding, strong price appreciation, Based on our analysis and engagements with our local broker network, we determined that it was a prime opportunity to capitalize on the built-in gains. We sold the property for a 20.4% price increase in just over two years.
There is no doubt that real estate investing in 2022 will continue to be impacted by the pandemic, but we will continue to position our funds for both short- and long-term success. We are confident that BENA Capital can continue to deliver stable income and manage risks for our investors, no matter what the year has in store.