Thomas McGuinness, president and CEO of InvenTrust Properties Corp., joined REIT.com for a CEO Spotlight video interview during REITWeek 2015: NAREIT’s Investor Forum, held in New York.
InvenTrust is a public non-listed REIT that focuses on open air retail and student housing real estate. The company became self-managed last year, spun off its lodging platform in February and adopted a new name in April. InvenTrust was formerly known as Inland American Real Estate Trust, Inc.
McGuinness acknowledged that it has been a particularly active period for the company, adding that in the last two years InvenTrust has bought and sold $4.2 billion of assets.
Looking forward, McGuinness said the REIT will focus on refining its two core units, as well as its non-core industrial and office assets.
With regard to its retail operations, McGuinness said InvenTrust is active in more markets than he would like. InvenTrust is looking to reduce the number of retail markets in order to develop a more concentrated hub-and-spoke system around its core markets of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix, he said. McGuinness also observed that competition for retail assets is “very tight” due to the dearth of new development.
Turning to student housing, McGuinness said the company’s assets are already “best-in-class,” so the focus going forward will be on adding scale.
Due to InvenTrust’s prerequisite that its student housing properties are highly-amenitized, purpose-built structures within a mile from campus, finding new acquisitions has been “extremely difficult,” McGuinness said. As a result, InvenTrust has become more active as a developer, he said.
Meanwhile, McGuinness noted that InvenTrust will continue to renew leases in its non-core operations, with an eye to ultimately monetizing the assets.