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Conlon sets up Irish venture - Kildare-born real estate entrepreneur and multi-million dollar American success story Sean Conlon has established his first Irish joint venture.
Conlon sets up Irish venture
By Con Power
Kildare-born real estate entrepreneur and multi-million dollar American success story Sean Conlon has established his first Irish joint venture.
Mr Conlon has teamed up with Dublin based property investment and development company Investor First to form Conlon & Co (Ireland). This new enterprise which will focus exclusively on servicing the growing Irish investor demand for US real estate.
Conlon & Co (Ireland) will specialise in originating, structuring and delivering off-market US real estate opportunities to Irish private client companies and individual high-net-worth investors.
Mr Conlon at 22 emigrated in 1990 from Rathangan, Co Kildare in search of the elusive "American Dream". Now in his late 30s, he currently presides over an extensive real estate empire, including a national real estate title company which handes over €4bn in real estate transactions annually across the US.
The Conlon Group product range consists of commercial office blocks, shopping centres, retail and logistics properties, hotels and selected land banking and development opportunities.
Investor First - headed by managing director James Carroll - is a real estate investment and development company focused on linking investor capital to development profits.
It operates through four distinct business units: real estate brokerage, real estate finance, real estate development and investment management.
To date, Investor First has supported transactions of around €400m throughout a number of markets including Ireland, UK, USA and Europe. It currently has offices in Ireland, the UK and the USA. Conlon & Co (Ireland)'s primary focus will be on sourcing off-market real estate opportunities in the leading East Coast cities of the USA, land/development deals across the whole country and placing of mezzanine finance funds through proprietary off shore funds managed by Conlon Group company Connaught Finance, a proprietary off-shore fund managed by Conlon Group.
Speaking from Chicago, Mr Conlon revealed that a number of projects were in the pipeline offering syndicated investor opportunities from €250,000 upwards. The initial project may be a 30 storey hotel project just three minutes from Sears Tower on arguably one of the most high profile sites in Illinois.
Led by rival Irish developer Garret Kelleher's ambitious Chicago Spire projects, recent transactions by Irish investors are estimated at a record €2bn. Yet this latest initiative comes at a time when worries over the US economy and property market are mounting on this side of the Atlantic.
"I am a contrarian," says Mr Conlon. "The really smart money is buying real estate right now. Major opportunities exist for investment on a selective basis. The hotel market is a case in point - there is currently a 40% bedrooms shortfall in the Chicago area."
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