Real Capital Analytics data from 2008 and 2009 shows that while most property sectors saw sharp drops in sales, “net lease spiked against those segments,” said Camille Renshaw, founder of B+E. “I believe that’s happening again today.”

A 2019 Connect Commercial Real Estate honoree as one of our Women in Real Estate and a 2020 Top Broker Award winner, Renshaw is also one of the net lease industry experts convened by Connect this week for a webinar discussing deal flow in the current market.

Moderated by Connect CEO Daniel Ceniceros, the conversation also features W. P. Carey’s Zachary Pasanen, CGA Capital’s Kyle Gore and Envoy Net Lease Partners’ Ralph Cram. Replays are available by clicking here.

Renshaw acknowledged that the stay-at-home orders adversely impacted certain net lease segments, such as casual dining. “If you can’t be open, that’s a bad story,” she said.

But in segments such as “essential” retail that remained open throughout, along with “almost all industrial” from last-mile warehouses through manufacturing facilities, “those cap rates are compressing,” said Renshaw. “There is absolutely more demand than there is supply.”

She noted that B+E’s institutional clients, each of which had raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital as 2020 began, paused their investing during the shutdown. Today, it’s a different story.

“We’ve gone into August now, and most of them have a game plan,” Renshaw said. “They’re out trying to find assets that rebalance their portfolios or simply get that cash out.”

She noted that Phoenix-based net lease REIT VEREIT, which has a great deal of retail in its portfolio, bought up a large, multi-market industrial portfolio earlier this month. “While I wasn’t involved with that transaction, I would think that VEREIT wanted a more balanced portfolio, so they’re getting more heavily into industrial,” said Renshaw.

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