Paladin Closes $454M Latin America Fund

LOS ANGELES-Privately held Paladin Realty Partners LLC has closed its third Latin America real estate fund, the $454 million Paladin Realty Latin America Investors III, the company said today. When combined with local partner equity and “relatively modest leverage,” Paladin says, the fund has the potential to invest in more than $1.5billion of assets across the Latin American region.

The fund will continue the same investment strategy that Paladin has pursued in Latin America for more than 10 years, in which it has invested in over $3 billion of assets, located primarily in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru. The fund’s strategy has focused on two primary components. One is joint ventures with local homebuilders to provide affordable housing targeting the region’s low‐income and growing middle‐class populations. The other is opportunistic investments in commercial properties and distressed opportunities such as recapitalizing public real estate companies facing liquidity problems. Paladin typically executes using low leverage of 30% to 40%.

To date, the fund has committed more than $200 million to various housing‐related investments in Brazil and Mexico, including the recapitalizations of two leading public home builders in Brazil.

Paladin was founded in 1995 in partnership with former US treasury secretary William E. Simon and is backed by some of the largest US pension funds and other institutional investors. It has invested inover 120 real estate projects throughout the region with a projected total capitalization of more than $3 billion.

In its latest closing, the fund’s placement agent was Triton Pacific Capital. Investors included several leading pension funds and other institutional investors.