Glenwood Equity and Patel Family Office Expand Platform for UAE Investors

DUBAI: Middle East-based investors are highly attracted to the U.S. real estate market due to its stability, security, and growth. To meet this increased investor demand, Glenwood Equity has partnered with U.S.-based Patel Family Office to set up new bases of operation in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Sharjah, Kuwait, Bahrain, Istanbul, Jeddah, Oman, Qatar, and Doha.

The local bases will liaise with the partnership’s Dubai hub to support high net worth private investors, wealth advisers, and strategic partners seeking asset backed , capital-protected, structured opportunities. An exclusive by-invitation launch event for select professional investors will be held at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC)’s Capital Club on February 2.

“The time to invest in U.S. real estate is now, as evidenced by one of the largest sovereign wealth funds ADIA, which increased its target allocation from 45% to 60% in 2023, PIF, Abu Dhabi Royal, and others increasing their U.S. exposure to capitalise on growth from the resurgence of oil prices and to strengthen their global diversification. The U.S is a leader in capital outflows from the Middle East and co-investments are a strategy that investors look for to share the risk and increase diversification during economic uncertainty,” said Rebecca Moreira, co-founder and managing partner of Glenwood Equity (left).

After helping 500+ HNI/UHNI investors in the last seven years to identify and invest in some of the great real estate assets in the United States, now Glenwood Equity the global asset manager, is launching the latest UAE-born co-investment opportunity FinTech platform focused on fulfilling the need for global diversification in the real estate sector by partnering with Patel Family Office.

Co-investments provide a wealth of benefits to investors’ portfolios and the UAE is at the heart of this platform’s inception by allowing investors to access exclusive institutional grade investment opportunities that are generally gobbled up by the likes of institutional investors such as BlackRock , Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and others.

The U.S. was a global leader in industrial and housing rent increases in 2022. The U.S. commercial real estate market is estimated to be a $20T dollar industry, and investors now have an array of options across multi-family, healthcare infrastructure, hospitality, land, and specialty real estate to satisfy their diversification strategy needs.

“In the last few years, our family office has been approached by a number of substantial families in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to provide co-investment insights based on our experience in investing, owning, and managing properties through multiple real estate cycles. It’s therefore a natural extension of our work to help high net worth investors and family offices in the MENA region to build and protect wealth via access to high-performing real estate in the United States,” said Dipika Patel, Chairwoman of Patel Family Office and board member of Glenwood Equity.

“When it comes to real estate investment, the U.S. is the most preferred market and U.S. real estate is the most preferred asset class for all the Middle East- based sovereign wealth funds, according to Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute research, (SWFI). According to the SWFI, when it comes to retail investors, real estate as an investment asset class represents 30–40 percent of the portfolio. For high-net-worth investor portfolios, real estate represents 25 percent of the portfolio and for institutional investors, real estate represents up to 20 percent of the portfolio.”

“Given our experience, we view the outflows into the United States by Middle Eastern investors as a complement and supplement to their investments at home. Two interesting trends we have noted are that Saudi Arabian investors prefer U.S. real estate over Europe, and that many expats in the Middle East seek to boost allocations to U.S. real estate as part of their quest for USD income. Glenwood helps these investors via access to on-the-ground intelligence, a vast deal-sourcing network, and, perhaps most importantly, a strong local presence in key Middle Eastern locales,” said Ms. Moreira.