Kevin V. Nguyen : sfstandard – excerpt

Thirteen years ago, Veritas Investments took advantage of the fallout from the Great Recession to start snapping up San Francisco homes by the thousands at a steep discount.

Fueled by a combination of private equity investment and lots of debt, Veritas continued its buying spree in the years that followed—eventually becoming the city’s largest residential landlord by 2016.

Now, amid a pandemic-induced real estate crash, a new outfit is poised to take Veritas’ place. Another opportunistic group—this time, a partnership between Ballast Investments and Brookfield Properties—has swooped in to buy up nearly $1 billion of mortgages that Veritas had defaulted on, public records show.

As a result, over 2,100 units across 76 apartment buildings in the city will have a new owner by the month’s end. While the foreclosed properties are technically on the market, industry observers say it’s most likely Ballast and Brookfield will just assume ownership of the buildings themselves, as they are now effectively Veritas’s lender…(more)