New York-based landlord Monday Properties is, for the first time, looking west. The real estate investment firm is opening an L.A. office and plans to begin targeting acquisitions in Los Angeles and along the West Coast.
“We’ve always wanted to open a West Coast office,” said Anthony Westreich, Monday’s chief executive. “We’ve been waiting for the right time and the right person.”
That person turned out to be Philip Cyburt, previously chief executive at Laurus Corp. in Century City. Monday’s plan is to draw on his background in office, multifamily, and hotel projects to look for properties in those sectors that could benefit from a pump of investment.
Cyburt said he is aiming for Monday to have about $2 billion of assets under management in the next five years in West Coast markets such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, and Portland.
“I see a huge opportunity in the marketplace for good, stable, high-quality operators,” he said.
With Monday’s history, access to capital, and the infrastructure already in place to own and operate large properties, it may be able to buy several properties at once, in a portfolio sale, rather than pick them off individually, Cyburt added.
Westreich said Monday is aiming to satisfy the demand of capital partners who are looking for opportunity in supply-constrained markets, without necessarily paying top-dollar. Although commercial values in Los Angeles are heating up, they remain lower than in other big-city markets, he said.
“The L.A. market and many of the submarkets within L.A. are not as far along in the bull market as some of the assets we see in Boston, New York, or San Francisco,” Westreich said.
Founded in 1998, Monday owns and operates about a dozen office towers in Arlington, Va., as well as a handful of multifamily complexes. It operates those properties and has also done ground-up construction and asset management.
Among its properties is a 35-story office tower in Arlington that Monday built in 2013. It lacked tenants until this month, when Nestle USA said it would take about 40 percent of the building once it relocates from its headquarters in Glendale.
