Kennedy Wilson Acquires Research Firm Meyers L.L.C.

March 7, 2012
By Gail Kalinoski, Contributing Editor

After working together on several projects, two leading real estate industry firms — Kennedy Wilson and Meyers Research L.L.C. — decided to team up in a more permanent way. Kennedy Wilson, the international real estate investment and services firm based in Beverly Hills, Calif., acquired the research and consulting firm.

The company headed by Jeff Meyers, which has 12 employees and four offices, will now be known as Meyers Research L.L.C., a Kennedy Wilson Company. Terms of the deal were not made public.

“The company’s tremendous resources and international reach with banking relationships across all property types will allow us to grow our data and research offerings as well as make direct investments into residential projects,” Meyers, principal of the Irvine, Calif.,-based residential research and advisory firm that bears his name, said of Kennedy Wilson.

“The variety of capabilities and depth of experience in the industry that he and his group bring will complement and add significant value to our existing services platform,” said William McMorrow, chairman & CEO of Kennedy Wilson.

Asked how the companies came together, Meyers told Commercial Property Executive he had known McMorrow for many years and that his firm had recently done underwriting for some of Kennedy Wilson’s residential portfolio. Meyers said his company has a “very strong network in the homebuilding arena,” and that Kennedy Wilson was looking to become more active in that area.

With Meyers Research L.L.C. now part of the family, Kennedy Wilson will continue to seek out more residential opportunities, according to Meyers.

“We’re looking at distressed bank assets that we can work together with homebuilders or developers on,” Meyers said. “We’re working on a couple of institutional bank deals that we’re excited about.”

Meyers is considered the leading expert on residential real estate trends. In 2006, he established Meyers L.L.C. as a consulting firm specializing in advisory, research and capital sourcing for single- and multi-family homebuilders, developers and financial institutions. From 1985 to 2004, he ran The Meyers Group, the largest provider of market research for the housing industry. At the time he sold it in 2004, The Meyers Group had 21 offices and over 200 employees.

Kennedy Wilson has 23 offices in the United States, Europe and Japan. As reported in CPE, Kennedy Wilson finalized its biggest European deal in the fall by acquiring a $1.8 billion United Kingdom loan portfolio. The company reports that the U.K. deal consisted of more than 170 properties, 62 percent of which are in London.  The majority of the properties – 39 percent – are office assets with multifamily housing accounting for 26 percent; retail, 25 percent and industrial, 9 percent. The remaining 1 percent is undeveloped land. Closer to home, Kennedy Wilson recently sold a 14-story luxury apartment building in the NoHo district of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley for $74 million.