Article Excerpt:
TWST: We'd like to begin with a brief historical sketch of America First Apartment Investors and a picture of the things you are doing at the present time.Mr. Cassidy: We became a REIT at the end of 2002, so we have been operating as a REIT for the last three years. Prior to that, we were a limited partnership. Our core asset base is multifamily residential real estate. The genesis of the company really is a combination of several limited partnerships that were merged and restructured into a REIT at the end of 2002, as I mentioned. Then in June 2004, we acquired another multifamily limited partnership that doubled our asset size to about $300 million and, again, that was a portfolio of multifamily residential real estate. When initially formed, we were an externally managed and externally advised REIT. In November 2004, we acquired a property management company to internalize the property management operations. And then most recently, at the end of 2005, we terminated the external advisory agreement for the REIT and became internally managed and administered, which is the typical model you see in public REITs today, particularly in the multifamily apartment sector. You still have some externally advised REITs out there but they tend not to be in the multifamily sector. So we have now evolved into a management structure that resembles our peer group of equity multifamily REITs. We currently have a portfolio of 29 multifamily properties totaling about 6,300 units, primarily in the Southeast and the Midwest, with a few properties in other locations as well. Our plan going forward is to continue to grow that portfolio, as well as selectively selling some of our smaller properties or assets in areas where we see minimal growth potential. From an operational perspective, we look to exit several markets that we are in today and reduce the number of markets where we currently own apartments to improve our operating efficiencies, which hopefully will lead to a greater profitability in the future. We started to execute that plan in 2005. We had three dispositions in 2005 and two acquisitions as well. We've just recently announced another apartment acquisition in the beginning of 2006, which we believe will perform very well over the next several years. That's a quick summary of our recent changes to the portfolio.
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