Heebner Sells New York Real Estate
Kenneth Heebner, manager of the top-ranked U.S. real-estate mutual fund, sold stakes in New York property owners because prices will decline as banks, hedge funds and buyout firms fire workers.
The $1.7 billion CGM Realty Fund divested SL Green Realty Corp., Manhattan’s biggest office landlord, since the end of June, Heebner said today in an interview in Boston. The manager, whose fund has returned an average of 40 percent a year since September 2002, cut stakes in real estate investment trusts to a quarter of assets from 75 percent in December.
“You’re seeing a retrenchment in the private-equity, hedge-fund and brokerage businesses, and there could be a lot of layoffs,” Heebner, 66, said. “That could have a devastating impact on high-end residential real estate in New York. Appetite for office space will also decline.”
Rising defaults of U.S. subprime mortgages triggered a sell-off of fixed-income securities and produced losses at brokerage firms and hedge funds. Private-equity transactions have unraveled as investors shun debt used to finance buyouts. Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. have cut jobs in units that provide subprime loans.
CGM Realty held 4.5 percent of its assets in SL Green as of June 30. The New York-based company’s stock fell 5.7 percent in the first six months of the year and has since dropped an additional 11 percent. The 130-member Bloomberg Real Estate Investment Trust Index decreased 8.8 percent so far this year.
SL Green became New York’s biggest owner of skyscrapers in January when it bought Reckson Associates Realty Corp. The company also bought properties in New York’s northern and Long Island suburbs, and said it would acquire Brooklyn’s tallest office tower at 16 Court St.
Apartment REITs
The fund unloaded shares of apartment REITs Archstone-Smith Trust and AvalonBay Communities Inc. this year. Archstone-Smith, owner of apartments in cities including New York, Washington and San Francisco, is being bought by a group led by Tishman Speyer Properties LP in New York. Alexandria, Virginia-based AvalonBay Communities’ biggest apartment rental markets include New York, Seattle, Washington and San Francisco.
Heebner, known for his rapid moves in and out of stocks, has steered the CGM Realty Fund to a 25 percent return this year to rank as the No. 1 property fund tracked by Bloomberg. He said he shifted more than half of the fund into global mining companies earlier this year. The fund’s investment policy allows him to purchase shares of companies with “significant” real- estate holdings including those in the hotel, mining, lumber and paper industries.
Top Holdings
The manager’s top stocks in the real-estate fund are Rio de Janeiro-based Cia Vale do Rio Doce, the world’s largest exporter of iron ore, and Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the world’s biggest maker of fertilizer. CVRD, as the Brazilian company is known, has surged 83 percent this year. Potash has climbed 88 percent.
At the $3.5 billion CGM Focus Fund, Heebner sold his 15 percent stake in investment banks including Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley during the second quarter. He said they will be hardest hit by the subprime rout. That fund has climbed 59 percent this year to place as the No. 1 U.S. stock fund.
Housing Market
Home values in America’s most expensive areas, including New York and California, may decline by as much as 11 percent in the next 3 1/2 years, according to Moody’s Economy.com, a forecasting agency and unit of Moody’s Corp. in New York. The last time those markets fell was a dozen years ago when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates seven times in 11 months.
Prices may decline amid a scarcity of financing spurred by rising delinquencies on subprime mortgages to people with poor credit. The number of U.S. homes facing foreclosure in July doubled from the year before to 179,599, according to the Washington-based Mortgage Bankers Association.
U.S. commercial real estate prices may fall as much as 15 percent over the next year in the broadest decline since the 2001 recession as rising borrowing costs force property owners to accept less or postpone sales, according to industry analysts at Morgan Stanley and Green Street Advisors Inc.
Heebner said he started selling shares in real estate investment trusts late last year after Blackstone Group LP agreed to acquire Equity Office Properties Trust. The New York- based buyout firm paid $39 billion, including debt, to purchase the office landlord in February after first agreeing to pay $36 billion in November.
“We were predominantly invested in REITS at that time and we sold most of them because we felt the valuations got excessive,” Heebner said.
Heebner, who had two-thirds of the real-estate fund in homebuilder stocks at the beginning of 2005, sold his entire stake by the end of that year. Homebuilder shares peaked in July 2005 and have since tumbled an average of 67 percent.