Most real estate investors look at “location, location, location” when deciding where to put their money. Not Dennis Mitchell.
“What drives real estate is jobs, jobs, jobs,” says the chief executive officer and chief investment officer at Starlight Capital in Toronto. “Where jobs are created, people move, and where people are moving, the demand for real estate increases.”
It’s not just housing but also malls, offices, schools, community centres and new infrastructure to support all of it, he says. There are also new data centres and cell towers required to keep all of these people communicating. Mr. Mitchell cites Austin, Tex., which has experienced a housing boom driven by job growth and an influx of new residents. About a dozen of the companies and real estate investment trusts that Starlight owns have exposure to the state capital – from residential and industrial properties to data centres.
Mr. Mitchell oversees about $325-million in assets, including the Starlight Global Real Estate Fund and the Starlight Global Infrastructure Fund, both created in the fall of 2018 and which include mutual fund and exchange-traded fund options. Total return for the global real estate ETF was 16.5 per cent over the past year as of July 5, according to Morningstar; the fund lost 5.6 per cent on a total return basis in 2020. Its top three publicly traded holdings are: Brookfield Asset Management Inc., which has real estate, renewable power, infrastructure, credit and private equity holdings; Granite REIT, which has industrial, warehouse and logistics properties in North America and Europe; and California-based Prologis Inc., which invests in logistics facilities.