Announcement

Lafayette Real Estate ‘s Annual Investor Report & Outlook 

While the calendar year provides a convenient marker, our business operates on a continuous timeline. Achievements and milestones often span longer than 365 days, while pivotal moments can occur in an instant. Nonetheless, the annual reset offers an opportunity for reflection and strategic planning, which I’ve undertaken here.

This recap of 2024 highlights several key themes, demonstrating the progress we’ve made and setting the stage for continued growth in 2025.

Vertical Integration: A Foundation for Success

Our commitment to vertical integration is a cornerstone of Lafayette Real Estate’s DNA. This year, we saw major milestones in this ongoing journey. Both Brandywine Homes and Marquis Homes achieved significant growth, expanding their teams, streamlining operations, and securing their first institutional third-party clients. This external validation from sophisticated institutions underscores the talent of our professionals and the high level of property management services we provide.

Brandywine Homes, led by Jackie Lee, now boasts a team of over 60 property management professionals across a dozen markets. Jackie’s exceptional leadership has earned her recognition as one of Georgia’s Top 100 CEO.

Marquis Homes, under Jason Besse’s leadership, has rapidly assembled a team of top homebuilding executives. In 2024, they delivered 50 homes under budget and have hundreds more slated to begin construction in 2025. They’ve also secured a third-party fee-building agreement to construct nearly 300 homes, accelerating our path to profitability just two years after launch.

We are immensely proud of Brandywine Homes and Marquis Homes’ accomplishments. Their success is integral to our overall performance and reinforces the power of our vertically integrated platform.

From Strategy to Reality: our successful shift to land acquisition

Last year’s newsletter highlighted our strategic shift towards land acquisition in response to the rising interest rate environment. We recognized that controlling our destiny meant taking charge of land sourcing, development and construction capabilities.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

In 2024, we turned this strategy into reality:

• We now control a land pipeline of approximately 1,400 lots under development or contract
• Our internal homebuilding team is equipped to entitle, develop, and build homes in-house
• We have allocated over $450 million in capital to our Build-to-Rent (BTR) land strategy

We are actively creating new housing supply where it’s needed most, delivering high-quality rental homes that offer our residents space, stability, and affordability.

Impact: Beyond Bricks and Mortar

Our commitment to developing new housing directly addresses the U.S. housing shortage and expands housing options for families. Despite the challenges posed by high interest rates, we have creatively found ways to deliver attainable single-family housing in prime locations. The strong performance of our communities, with a 95% occupancy rate and a 70%+ renewal rate, attests to their quality and effectiveness of our property management services.

Our impact extends beyond providing housing. Brandywine Cares, our non-profit launched in 2020, achieved significant milestones in 2024:

• Nearly 400 individuals in our communities received career advancement support, with 166 participating in one-on-one coaching
• 48 individuals secured new jobs, with an average salary increase of $35,000
• Total community impact reached $1.7 million

We are just beginning to realize the full potential of Brandywine Cares, and we are committed to scaling its impact in 2025.

Looking Ahead: 2025 and Beyond

In 2024, we observed a more normalized rental market following the frenzy of previous years, yet occupancy and rent growth levels remained healthy and we expect continued positive performance in 2025. We are fortunate to operate in an asset class with exceptionally strong fundamentals, but we do not just rely on these. Since 2011, we have built a best-in-class, vertically integrated platform and in 2025, our focus will be on leveraging this platform to further scale our impact and unlock new synergies. Key objectives include:

✔ Expanding homebuilder partnerships: Homebuilders have been key partners since 2019, and we see significant opportunities for further collaboration

✔ Relaunching a credit strategy: Our goal is to become a lender of choice in the BTR space

✔ Executing on our land pipeline is a top priority

✔ Scaling our investment strategies by deploying significantly more capital

I extend my sincere gratitude to our team for their dedication and hard work, our investors for their continued trust and support, and our business partners for their valuable collaboration.

As we enter 2025, I am incredibly excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. By staying true to our core values of Entrepreneurship, Transparency & Openness, and Discipline, I am confident that we will achieve our mission, reach our goals, and continue to build a truly exceptional organization.

Thibault Adrien
Founder & CEO, Lafayette Real Estate