LendInvest founder launches private credit fund
Faes & Co, an investment firm led by LendInvest founder Christian Faes (pictured), has launched its first private credit fund and is looking to raise up to $100m (£79.3m) for property bridging finance in the US.
The Faes & Co Income Fund will invest in loans originated by Faes & Co’s own group company, F2 Finance, which was launched earlier this year.
It will focus on funding a diversified portfolio of short-term mortgages, secured by first mortgage against residential property in the US.
The fund is open-ended and available to accredited investors in the US, with a Cayman Islands feeder fund available for offshore investors.
Read more: LendInvest completes £410m securitisation of buy-to-let loans
The fund will be lending to “property entrepreneurs” that are active in the “fix & flip” market, the firm said, as it looks to capitalise on growth in the US short-term mortgage market which was recently estimated to be as large as $68bn a year in annual originations.
“The US real estate bridging finance market has undergone a recent period of disruption, where traditional institutional funders have significantly slowed their appetite for a variety of reasons – from the securitisation market being ‘less open’, to regional banks that have had a flight of deposits post the SVB crisis,” said Faes.
Read more: LendInvest enters residential mortgage market
“The asset class now presents a very interesting and unique opportunity for investors. It is also a very large and liquid market for building a diversified pool of asset-backed loans that provide a superior risk-adjusted return for investors.”
Faes has almost two decades of experience in the property bridging finance sector across Australia, the UK, Ireland and now the US.
He co-founded specialist mortgage lender LendInvest in the UK, which listed on London’s Aim in July 2021. The firm’s assets under management grew by 21 per cent to £2.6bn in its latest full-year results.
Read more: M&G: UK property dip presents opportunity for alternative lenders
