Gratia Capital Feels Right At Home With These Real Estate Stocks

The next real estate equity in the portfolio of Gratia Capital is that of Forest City Enterprises Inc (NYSE:FCE.A) in which Gratia holds 599,530 shares valued at $13.52 million. During the second quarter the stock of the company depreciated by some 13%, which could have served as a reason for Gratia Capital to jump on it while it was cheap, as the fund decided to increase its ownership in the company by 71% during the period from April to June. The $5.89 billion company is involved in various kinds of operations related to commercial and residential real estate and land ownership in the United States. The second quarter results came out mostly in line with the earnings’ expectations of analysts, while Forest City Enterprises Inc (NYSE:FCE.A) managed to beat the revenue estimates by a solid $93.5 million, reporting $330.58 million. Among the other prominent investors of Forest City Enterprises Inc (NYSE:FCE.A) one can find AEW Capital Management, headed by Jeffrey Furber, which held around 4.35 million shares worth $96.06 million at the halfway point of the year.

Lastly, following up a 19% slash to its position in LGI Homes Inc (NASDAQ:LGIH), Steve Pei’s holding totaled 561,441 shares valued at $11.11 million. Another construction company, with a market capitalization of $464.07 million, LGI Homes has mostly traded sideways over the first half of the year. However, a few days ago it managed to break the stale performance with a 26% jump over the course of the day on August 5. The reasoning behind that move can easily be explained by an extract from the earnings call of the company on that same date: “We set a new quarterly record with 853 homes closed and $158.8 million of homes sales revenue which represents a 29% increase in closings and 49% increase in revenue over the second quarter of 2014.Contributing to this record breaking quarter was an all-time record for home closings during a single month with 331 closings in June of 2015. We finished the first six months of the year with a total of 1,524 homes closed, which represents 33% increase over the first six months of 2014 ”.  Geoffrey Raynor‘s Q Investments held the largest position in the stock as of March 31 among the funds we track, with a position of 763,149 shares.

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