Eugene Landy, founder and chairman of Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corp. (NYSE: MNR) and UMH Properties, Inc. (NYSE: UMH), has been named by Yale Law School as the 2014 recipient of the Simeon Baldwin award, which recognizes distinguished achievement in law and business.
Roberta Romano, director of the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law, described Landy as “one of the pioneers and founders of the real estate investment trust industry, which has played a critical role in reducing the cost of residential and commercial real estate by providing investors with a practical means of diversifying their investment portfolios into real estate.”
Landy, a 1958 graduate of Yale Law School, “early on recognized how the REIT creates value by turning illiquid assets into liquid ones, facilitating homeowners’ and entrepreneurs’ property acquisitions,” Romano added.
Monmouth Real Estate specializes in net-leased industrial properties with long-term leases, primarily to investment-grade tenants. UMH Properties owns and operates manufactured home communities in seven states throughout the Northeast.
Landy, meanwhile, noted that “there is no finer example of the partnership of business and the law producing value for our economy than the creation of REITs.”
He added that “the economic concept was simple: that creating new pools of real estate capital would reduce the cost of offices, apartments, factories, stores and industrial buildings. A new investment vehicle would create wealth and it has. Today, REITs are worldwide in acceptance.”
Past winners of the Simeon Baldwin award include former Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig.