Back to the Land
3/13/2009
By late summer land broker Fraser Forbes will launch a financing arm, CEO Rich Samit tells us. We stopped by his McLean office this week to hear about it. After we got the photo tour of his four very cute kids, we learned that Rich has identified about $5B in equity that wants to invest in the Mid-Atlantic. We talked to these people regularly and they are ready to go all they want is assurance that the market has hit bottom. Rich thinks we are nearly at that point.
FF also launched an asset management services platform in January. Rich hired John Begert, a ten-year development veteran from JPI, to run it. And he hired Seth Potack from McWilliams Ballard.
Caryl Ruppert Ersenkal, who came on board 18 months ago when FF formed its advisory services group. Rich says FF began to offer new services for bankers and developers in 2006 when the land sales market slowed.
