Joseph Penner – Fund Manager
Phone: (310) 234-2140
Email: jpenner@lmrei.com
Mr. Penner is the Fund Manager for the Chesapeake family of funds. Mr. Penner also serves as a member of the Investment Committee. The Chesapeake funds have acquired over $325 Million of real estate equity and debt investments between June 2006 and May 2009. These have been mostly direct acquisitions; where Mr. Penner’s team manages the direct execution of the business plan.
Mr. Penner is also the founding partner of Hill Street Realty, a full service real estate company formed in 2001. Hill Street has acquired, managed and executed the value add process on properties with values in excess of $100 million. Hill Street's realized returns have averaged approximately 30%.
Both Chesapeake and Hill Street have been investors in a wide variety of real estate assets including multi-family, office, retail, hotels, and industrial. Value-add projects have included physical renovations, redevelopments, entitlements and permitting, financial re-engineering and management efficiencies.
Prior to Hill Street Realty, Mr. Penner was a Director at The Capital Corporation of America ("CCA"), formerly known as Nomura Asset Capital Corporation. In 1994, Mr. Penner was recruited to open the branch office for CCA in Los Angeles and completed over $1.2 Billion of real estate transactions in two years. In 1997, Mr. Penner moved to Paris and developed the European expansion plan and business model for CCA’s real estate lending business.
Mr. Penner has been in the real estate business since 1990, working with various real estate opportunity and investment funds such as Starwood Capital, The Signature Group and JRK Investments. During that time, Mr. Penner has performed numerous functions in the real estate business including management and leasing, acquisitions and dispositions, analysis and computer modeling, and fundraising, financing and structuring. Between 1993 and 1994, while at JRK Investments, Mr. Penner acquired over 1750 multifamily units from the RTC and FDIC. From 1984 to 1990, Mr. Penner worked at Citicorp in the securities group of the international private bank.