Apartment For Sale Berlin Spree

Lynd brothers on buying spree despite volatile US market.

It's a tumultuous time in real estate, but San Antonio-based Lynd is on a buying spree.

The real estate investment and management company in May purchased an $80 million portfolio of nine student apartment buildings in Tallahassee, Fla., near the Florida State University campus.

Also this year, affiliate Easton-Lynd Management , based in Miami, which concentrates on office, industrial and retail properties, purchased $62 million worth of notes on 1.3 million square feet of space in Florida, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Ohio, Maine and Washington, D.C.

And the firm has been celebrating the success of a recently opened luxury rental tower in Chicago, the 249-unit EnV.

The property is 78 percent leased and is up for sale. A recent article in Crain's Chicago Business cited sources that estimate EnV could fetch as much as $125 million and rank among the most expensive downtown apartment sales in Chicago history.

“They're a big player that very few people know anything about,” said Pat Duncan , chairman and CEO of USAA Real Estate.

USAA Real Estate has hired Lynd to do feasibility studies on multifamily projects and to manage properties.

The firm started in the multifamily management business with about 1,100 units when brothers Mike Lynd Jr. and David Lynd , both Antonian High School graduates, joined their father, Mike Lynd Sr., in the 1990s.

Now Lynd has projects in 13 states, about 100 employees at the San Antonio headquarters and more than 1,000 across the country. This year the firm was ranked 40th on the National Multi Housing Council 's list of the nation's largest apartment managers, with 32,875 units under management, (a number that has since grown to about 34,000 units with the new acquisitions).

Mike Lynd, 38, CEO and vice president of investments, said Lynd is benefitting from a national trend favoring renting over buying a home, as well as opportunities to purchase distressed properties.

An increasing number of single parents, Hispanics and Gen Y workers — all of whom rent in higher numbers than average — also gives the company a growing base of potential clients.

“The pendulum, I think for now, looks good for our business,” he said.

Mike Lynd said the firm would like to continue tackling two or three development deals a year — including possibly a residential rental project in downtown San Antonio.

“I would love to do something here in downtown San Antonio if we could make it work,” he said. “We're looking for the right opportunity.

Head Lie: CNN Says Insiders On Stock Buying Spree

“Insiders go on buying spree”

Corporate insiders are rushing to buy shares in their companies, suggesting that they think the recent sell-off in their stocks is overdone.

“There’s a lot of buying and it’s widespread across all market cap groups and all sectors,” said Ben Silverman, director of research at InsiderScore.com.

…

Research firm TrimTabs calculates that insiders have already bought $861 million so far in August, the most since just over $1 billion of insider purchases back in March 2009. That’s significant since it’s the month in which stocks hit their lows during the last recession and started two years of steady gains.

Source: CNN Money

It’s not only CNN, but all of the mainstream financial news channels and web sites that are reporting the sudden jump in insider buying. Curiously, none of the reports we read had any data whatsoever on the other side of the story –  ”insider selling.” They were touting only the buy side of the data and pointing to this data as a sign that the stock market has bottomed.