High Growth Real Estate Private Equity Investing

Grace Sprite:

Thank you, Elana, for having me.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

Absolutely. So to kick off the conversation, tell us a little about New Land Capital and how you got to where you are today.

Grace Sprite:

Of course. So New Land Capital, we are a real estate private equity firm based in New York City. We are plugging to the whole system that will become this vertically integrated real estate platform. We have investing and development construction and property management, and even the sales, the mortgage team. The reason we're doing it that way is so we can maximize the processing every single step and minimize the risks, in a sense that we have a better control over the final deliverable product. And a little bit of a story, a background about me. So I first came to United States when I was, back in 2011, finishing my master degree. And this is a whole new world for me and very exciting, just like American Dream. Never thought I would be ending up here and speaking with you right now. So came from a small town in China, a small town with 3 million people, and came over to United States, and finished my master degree and got my job working at Apple to start with, and then somehow started working at a single-family office that actually my career in real estate started to take off from there. And then, after that I have worked in various developers and also commercial real estate brokerage team, and then now and I'm working at New Land Capital.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

Loved hearing your journey, Grace. So to follow up on the next question I have for you, given your firm focuses on real estate private equity, I would love to hear your overall outlook for the space.

Grace Sprite:

Of course. So I would say that in the year of 2025, we're seeing a lot of challenges and also opportunities. There are a lot of, transactions start to pick up. We saw markets, asset classes like multifamily and retail, they are starting to do better and better. But of course, sectors like offices still have a little bit of a hiccup. Our overall strategy is very much New York-centric, New York-focused because we are based here. Our sponsors have been building projects in the New York City area for the last 30 years. We have built over a hundred buildings in the New York area, so New York is our home, New York is our home base. We're always going to belong for New York. And so, there's one saying that, "One New York, one universe out there." So we're definitely going to keep on growing our portfolio in New York City, but there are also pockets outside of New York like Texas, Houston, and also Cali. There are markets we're starting to pay more attention to because real estate in a sense, it is a people business. Where the population growth is happening is always going to attract our attention.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

And Grace, I'd love for you to touch on some of the specific greatest opportunities you see in your space and why.

Grace Sprite:

Yeah. As I mentioned, New York City is our home base and we do a lot of residential condo ground ups and multi-family hotels in New York City. Actually, not one of, the tallest building outside of Manhattan, the Skyline Tower, is our very proud flagship building. We are a huge advocator of presenting and building more products for the New York residents, because there's still a shortage in terms of housing supply in New York. And the market needs to see more diversified products; not just seeing a community like Manhattan, but also like around the city, Flushing, and Rego Park. Those areas also deserve more attention. They also deserve more favored or even quite luxury, more advanced, more seasoned products out there because the demographics are also becoming more sophisticated. They're looking for more and diversified solutions, and we are here to provide that for them.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

Grace, on the other hand, what are some of the greatest challenges you face your in your space and why?

Grace Sprite:

Right. Just like any other developers right now, I would say that we are constantly facing marketing risks and also policy risks. There's a lot of ups and downs in the last since Covid. And we saw the anxious rate hike and we saw the geographic, geopolitical attention, and we saw some turbulence in the markets. But what's happening right now is looking forward into 2025, we probably are going to see more stress on the tariff. That's going to have a direct impact on our market, which will kind of push the price on the materials and the labor cost. Those are all going to squeeze our profit. But I would say that wherever there's a challenge, there's opportunity. We have been there for the last 30 years and we're still standing strong. And with all of those challenges coming our way that we are going to handle it smoothly, hopefully.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

Grace, to shift gears a bit, ESG has been top of mind for the industry, and wanted to hear how New Land Capital is integrating it.

Grace Sprite:

Yeah, of course. We are a strong advocator in the field of ESG. As a matter of fact, at New Land Capital are actually right now in the middle of preparing sustainability action events, a series of events with Columbia University. We are going to hold the kickoff event on Friday, this coming up Friday, and there's going to be a series event about a sustainability in art. And eventually, we're going to host actually a BP contest with all the students at Columbia University. And the essence of the contest is we're using one of our retail space as a sample, and asking all the students to come up with what's the best BP, business plan, for that space; how to best utilize it in terms of increase or generate the revenue, but at the same time with sustainability in mind. So that's something very exciting. We're going to be holding that event throughout the month of February and March. And in the meantime, just as operator, we're also very mindful of our action. How do we represent what we stand for? For instance, one of the projects in Flushing is a waterfront district that is a special program proposed by the local city, that in essence that the project needs to do is to rezone and redesign the whole waterfront area in Flushing. Currently, it's just a parking lot. But after the whole renovation, after the whole cleaning up, including the water, including providing more community spaces for the local residents, that area is going to completely change. We even jokingly call it is going to be the mini Hudson Yard, so we are very excited about bringing more awareness on the spotlight to ESG in our project.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

Grace, your journey, being a woman in the industry is such an inspiration. Love to hear what you're doing to inspire others to follow in your footsteps.

Grace Sprite:

Definitely there are some challenges being a woman in our industry, because it is still very much a male-dominated industry. We have to admit that. But in the meantime, I think I personally have received a lot of help and assistance and guidance from male leaders as well along my career. And so, I don't think we are enemies. I think we are actually great partners together. In the meantime, especially in New Land Capital, I would say that we have over 50% employees are female, and in that type of encouraging open environment, I think everybody performs better. In the meantime, I feel especially a message to younger females who are aspired to enter industry or finance or real estate or private equity firm, etc, I feel like your work will always speak for yourself. Don't just create difficulties out of nowhere. Do your best work and you are going to be where you want to.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

Grace, we've covered a lot of ground today and wanted to see if you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with us.

Grace Sprite:

2025 is going to be another great year for us. We hope that, we plan for that, we aim for that, and we're going to work hard for that.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

Grace, I wanted to thank you so much for sharing your perspective with our listeners.

Grace Sprite:

Thank you. Thank you, Elena, for having me. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much.

Elana Margulies-Snyderman:

And thank you for listening to the EisnerAmper podcast series. Visit EisnerAmper.com for more information on this and a host of other topics. And join us for our next EisnerAmper podcast when we get down to business.

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