NEW YORK CITY—A syndicate of investors led by Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust is making a $300 million preferred equity investment in Toronto-based Tricon Residential, with BREIT acquiring $240 million of the preferred equity.
“We are pleased to make this preferred equity investment in Tricon,” Frank Cohen, chairman and CEO of BREIT, said in prepared remarks. “We continue to see strong underlying fundamentals in the rental housing sector and believe the company’s high quality, income-generating assets are poised to generate stable performance under the leadership of its best-in-class management team.”
Tricon expects to use the full net proceeds of the Investment to repay its corporate credit facility, reducing its proportionate leverage by approximately 500 basis points to approximately 56% net debt/assets excluding convertible debentures. Tricon says it wants to reduce its leverage to 50-55% net debt/assets and expects the planned syndication of an equity interest in its US multifamily portfolio to help it reach this goal.
Tricon focuses on the middle-market housing demographic in the US. It reported that throughout Q2 and the month of July, it collected 99% of historical rents across its single-family rental business and 98% of historical rents in its US multifamily rental business. Less than 1% of residents requested deferral plans in the month of July, and approximately 2% of single-family residents and 4% of U.S. multifamily residents are currently on deferral plans.