Ex-Morgan Stanley exec joins GoldenTree InSite

GoldenTree InSite Partners has hired former Morgan Stanley Real Estate executive Richard Cohen as managing director.

The firm said in a statement Cohen would be based in New York, reporting to Bill Cisneros as the firm looks to boost its investor relations team. Cisneros is senior managing director of GoldenTree InSite’s equity capital markets group.

This is a very exciting time in the domestic real estate market. We now see an unprecedented opportunity to capitalise on the housing market dislocation. GoldenTree InSite president Tom Shapiro

Cohen was previously executive director at Morgan Stanley Real Estate, helping raise capital for real estate and infrastructure funds, and prior to that was senior vice president at ING Clarion.

After a two-year absence, GoldenTree InSite is now actively investing in the US market, targeting distressed land and condo deals. “We have been focused on Brazil and stopped investing in the US for over two years as we couldn’t find anything with the appropriate risk-adjusted returns,” said president and founder Tom Shapiro in a PERE magazine article in April.

In March, the firm closed the first deal of a joint venture with Texas homebuilder LGI Homes buying 175 improved residential lots in the Chisholm Springs subdivision in Fort Worth, Texas. The venture will see the firm invest $50 million in equity, as part of its wider strategy of investing up to $500 million in residential land and development projects in the US. GoldenTree InSite last year teamed up with another homebuilder, Hovnanian Enterprises, to buy and develop residential housing in Chicago and Palm Beach County, Florida.

Shapiro said at the time the firm’s focus in the US was primarily on broken condo and land deals, arguing there were still too few opportunities in the office, retail and industrial sectors owing to non-stable net operating incomes and banks’ willingness to restructure and extend debt coming due on the assets.

In the Cohen statement, Shapiro added: “This is a very exciting time in the domestic real estate market. We now see an unprecedented opportunity to capitalise on the housing market dislocation.”