Why is your debt to equity level so high relative to other real estate entities?
Homburg Invest Inc. has debt at two levels. Firstly, we have conventional
debt on our individual properties at the partnership level. Homburg Invest is
effectively a mutual fund of real estate partnerships, which means that Homburg
Invest has no direct ownership of the assets, but rather it owns the units of
the various limited partnerships that own the assets. This achieves “asset
protection” in that no property can be affected by problems in any other
partnership. They are all effectively stand alone.
Over and above this partnership level of conventional debt that is at the
approximately 60% level, we have our Bond program. The Bonds are guaranteed at
the corporate level, and have no charge over specific assets