About Us
Brookwood is a private equity real estate investment firm that specializes in acquiring and managing value-add commercial real estate and related operating businesses on behalf of a select group of institutional investors, including endowments, pension funds and foundations, family offices and high net worth individuals. Since our founding in 1993, we have consistently employed an innovative and contrarian investment approach to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for our clients.
In our history we have invested over $1 billion of equity to acquire a portfolio of 200 commercial real estate properties, seven operating companies and 137 gas stations and convenience stores. Our $2.6 billion historical portfolio has spanned multiple asset classes, geographical markets and industries across the United States.
We are proven financial stewards. We are known in the investment community for the high quality of our investment research, the depth of our market analysis and due diligence and the trust, transparency and integrity with which we treat our clients, industry colleagues, partners and employees. Our track record is long and well-established. Quite simply, we have a well-earned reputation for producing outstanding results because we do so consistently. — Thomas Nicholas Trkla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
We are entrepreneurial
We challenge ourselves constantly and eschew conventional thinking. We continuously look for patterns in markets, credit cycles, capital flows, economic indices and cultural trends, while formulating plans to exploit them positively and profitably. We use past experiences, accumulated market intelligence and insight to make smart decisions. We have created an environment that inspires and nurtures all of our professionals to have the imagination to question, the drive to push boundaries and the courage to act on instinct.
We are contrarian
We are contrarian at our core, and it defines how we think and how we act as an organization. We believe that mainstream thinking and confirmation bias lead to mediocre outcomes. We have built an organization in which going against the grain is encouraged and in which we act on creativity, inspiration and preparedness. In so doing, we constantly challenge conventional investment wisdom, and we do so for one simple reason – to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for our clients by unearthing or creating attractive investment opportunities.
We are disciplined investors
We adhere to stringent underwriting standards, never manipulating inputs or assumptions to achieve a desired outcome. We invest at the inception of market recoveries and buy assets when they are cheap or attractively-priced and sell when the business objectives have been met and or when the assets are fully-priced or overpriced. If pricing does not make sense, we will abstain from investing. In addition, we have and will continue to raise only the amount of capital that we can invest prudently and productively. We work to monetize the value we create in the shortest time period possible as evidenced by the 5.28 year average holding period of our billion dollar sold portfolio.
We are value creators
We take an active approach to creating value. We improve and reposition assets in both a targeted and judicious manner, only making those capital improvements that we think will enhance returns. Our business plans often include the creation or improvement of collaborative areas, fitness centers, conference rooms, cafés and outdoor seating areas. We implement aggressive leasing and tenant retention programs and provide hands-on asset management, property management and building engineering services, which allow us to create strong, operational alignment between our goals as an owner and the execution of our business plan.
We are true fiduciaries
For over a quarter of a century, we have earned the trust and confidence of our clients through our unwavering commitment to always act in their best interest and by consistently achieving attractive returns. We are completely transparent and are lauded for the high quality, timeliness and detail of our investor reporting. For each investment entity, we furnish timely annual tax reports and quarterly and annual investor update reports that provide in-depth analysis of market conditions and entity-specific operational performance.
A true fiduciary always acts in the best interests of its clients. There are times when one should buy, when values are attractive and markets are in the early stages of a definable recovery; and there are times when one should sell, when markets have become fully-priced or overvalued. For our value-add real estate, our goal is not and never has been to amass large, monolithic portfolios with no exit strategy, but rather to achieve the highest returns in the shortest timeframe possible. For our Yesway-branded portfolio of convenience stores, our strategy is to create a best-in-class chain with a focus on long-term growth and stability. We were one of the few real estate private equity firms to liquidate our entire pre-2005 portfolio before the crash in October of 2008.
