2009 was a crisis year. Hardly any developer could close with his finance partners on projects although the market opportunities were impressive. The Jupiter Group focused on the US, taking advantage of the market conditions to buy, against the market trend, a number of key projects.
One notable project included a large tract of land in the vicinity of Orlando. The property is strategically beautifully located in the western growth path of the city. The county has committed to building an infrastructure access to a major thruway that will immediately make this piece of land very valuable to commercial and retail users as well as to home builders. The property was financed together with a visionary German entrepreneur who values the economic perspective of the United States very positively. We think the US will come out of the recession much quicker than other parts of the world. The US-dollar has further room for appreciation and a carefully selected land acquisition will better withstand any inflationary pressure than other assets. Key is: will the selected land benefit from demographic movement and infrastructure measures? We believe this is the case.
2010 was a targeted development year as certain regions recovered from the economic shock of ’09. The Jupiter Group continued its expansion within the USA, and matched a number of investors with the intent of purchase of distressed assets, ranging from Commercial centres to shopping malls, part complete beachfront hotels to inland retirement communities. This year was a time of opportunity for holders of capital, who additionally were able to access debt.
The European debt crisis has driven investors even more to look into buying real assets to protect their wealth. While prices in the USA have recovered from their lows and development of the US economy has slightly edged up European assets have come into the focus of investors. Jupiter Group used the year 2011 to concentrate on providing advice on European real estate projects. The 2009 and 2010 US projects were more concentrated on opportunistic assets. In contrast Jupiter Group concentrated on the „core“ sector in Europe, predominantly Germany, in 2011.