I Now Hunt For Winner Ideas In Global Real Estate!

(MENAFN- The Arabian Post) Matein Khalid

While Marjan Island day trips with Amore mio Donna Farah hardly makes me nostalgic for my singleton era visits to Vegas and college boy trips to the odious Trump Plaza/Taj Mahal casinos in Atlantic City, I have no problem taking a flutter on Wynn when it traded at 12X earnings since the free cash flow yield is a more reliable proxy for a money making trade than the capricious whims of Lady Luck. This is why the casino action now moves to Las Vegas Sands (LVS). 2Q results were a blowout last week. Macau and Singapore are both on a roll and LVS capex in both its key Asian properties is now done.

The Londoner resort has helped goose Macau market share while Bob Goldstein has hit a sixer (us colonials chaps do cricket metaphors duckies!) in Marina Bay Sands down in the Lion City. No wonder LVS shares are up 8% in the last week and 20% in the last month. This seems almost as good as the insiders who hit multiple home runs when Marjan Island morphed from a busted SRK Bollywood theme park to the first wannabe casino in the Gulf. As for moi, if a hotel/casino is not listed on the NYSE, i will never buy into the story, though do let me know if the La Belle Époque beauty at the Place Casino in Monte Carlo that did not let Manju and I since we were wearing jeans ever floats on the stock exchange, I will gladly turn cartwheels and take a punt on this mother of all trophy assets. My current buy price on LVS is 45-56. Ce n'est pas le moment de jouer LVS.

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US homebuilder shares have been mired in a painful bear market, down 17% on the sector tracker ITB in the past year. The Powell Fed's refusal to slash rates means 7% mortgage rates deter new buyers while Trump's tariff threats against Canada and deportation of untold million illegal immigrants suggests the cost of lumber and construction/wages moves higher.

Copper tariffs will also raise plumbing costs and the price of imported Carrara marble from Toscana in La Bella Italia is also spiking higher. I do not have any interest in zombie real estate sectors du jour and have zero exposure to US homebuilders for now. Demand smells just as sweet as a garbage dump. Builders will continue to cut prices and miss on margins/guidance, though DR Horton did not. Supply is rising and the job market just faces too many crevices.

Mortgage rates will not fall big time unless the US economy slips into recession when builder shares get sandbagged and only the shorts will make money in the debris. In private real estate, I believe the best risk/reward lies in buildings that rent to doctor owned outpatient clinics, where tailwinds are rich but aging Baby Boomer demographics and shifts from nosebleed hospitals will boost rental growth. Supply is at 40% of cycle peak while the occupancy rate is 95%. Yummykins! I hear the Hippocratic Oath has now been repealed in the Gulf as our private equity financiers insist that doctors should optimize revenues via uncessassary extra procedures/tests/surgeries in order to make the hospital's cash register ring, yella-yella-kaching-kaching. I do not know whether to laugh or to cry after I had lunch with a friend who had lived through the horror show of the Abraaj healthcare fraud and Al Masah's Dash It All and Drop Dead medical platform.

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In the UK, student housing is no longer as grotty as it was in my time, the reason I fled to America. In fact, I was amazed at the uber luxury facilities I visited in the sceptred isle though only for students who happened to be Chinese, the offspring of CCP honchos and drive to uni in their Lambos and Ferraris, vroom vroom... Seriously, there is a chronic shortage of student flats in London and other UK cities, so Jon Gray at Blackstone is on the right track, as he was in the Hilton LBO.

Senior Housing and acute care will remain a profitable theme since the supply demand equation is so skewed in the landlord's favour, the reason my fave US REIT apart from the data center guys is now Welltower (WELL). REITs provide me with income when long duration bonds stink as well as an ideal inflation hedge and low correlation to global equities at a time when US valuation metrics are at cycle peaks at 22 times forward earnings and a zero equity risk premium. I was born at night, only not last night.

Also published on Medium .

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