Non-traded REITs are like thanksgiving turkey:

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. “On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.”
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: “On Robustness and Fragility” (Incerto)

 

That chart could easily be replaced with “4 years in the life of AR Global REIT investors. ARC Hospitality(Now Hospitality Investors Trust) was offered at $25.00 a share from 2013-2015, and would never have been marked below $22.00 on a client statement until this summer. It was recently revalued at $13.20 . Likewise ARC Healthcare Trust III was offered at $25.00, and recently marked down to $17.64. Both programs were sold as conservative stable investments that wouldn’t have the volatility one experiences in the stock market.

Of course, the revision of value wasn’t really unexpected, so the thanksgiving turkey/black swan analogy isn’t really right. . ARC Hospitality was egregiously over leveraged, all the ARC REITs, egregiously mismanaged by a kleptocratic external adviser. However, for customers who based their belief exclusively on the account statement, rather than actual analysis of the portfolio, the experience has been like that of the thanksgiving turkey. Investors in other non-traded REITs have had even worse experiences. Account statement stability is an illusion. Snapping out of that illusion can be painful.

In the case of ARC Hospitality, Brookfield Asset Management has mostly taken over, and will likely drive some recovery of value. Brookfield provided some rescue equity financing on dilutive returns- the alternative would have been a potential “going concern issue”. They have convertible preferred with a strike price about 11% above the current NAV. In the case ARC Healthcare Trust III, management is doing convoluted affiliated merger with another AR Global managed REIT. Strangely when an affiliate is buying it, they believe its worth less than the value they were selling it at before. More on these shenanigans later.