LOS ANGELES, CA - The Bascom Group of Irvine, California and Milestone Real Estate Partners of Los Angeles, California announced the formation of a joint venture called Bascom Milestone Ventures. Milestone Partners will provide funding to sponsors to help them capitalize their general partner interest in value add, opportunistic, and development joint venture real estate transactions.
Milestone Partners was formed by real estate private equity veteran William C. Wells in recognition of the market need for a reliable, flexible, institutional capital source dedicated to capitalizing the general partner or managing member position of joint venture real estate transactions. Milestone Partners plans to invest more than $50,000,000 of sponsor capital over the next three years and will target high teens returns. Milestone Partners will allocate its capital throughout the US and invests across all asset types and strategies.
William Wells stated, "The average real estate firm in this country is entrepreneurial with less than 20 employees. Accordingly, sponsors must currently syndicate their General Partner equity position, which takes time and effort away from the all-important task of managing and acquiring new assets. By contrast, Milestone Partners offers these same sponsors a long term, flexible, singular institutional source of sponsor capital at an extremely compelling cost of capital." He went on to say, "With Bascom as our partner we bring significant industry relationships with us into every deal. For these reasons, we truly believe that Milestone is the future of the sponsor capital niche."
David Kim, a Managing Partner for Bascom added, "We have been funding very successful sponsor capital investments and numerous companies for over 20 years and thought the timing was right to formalize a program with William Wells." Jerry Fink, a Managing Partner for Bascom also added, "William Wells has significant private equity experience and extensive relationships with a wide array of real estate companies. We believe he will add value to established sponsors as well as entrepreneurial firms seeking capital market experience and equity relationships for help in getting their deal financed."
Prior to founding Milestone, Mr. Wells was a member of the real estate investments team for Fortress Investment Group's credit funds, where he focused on making opportunistic joint venture real estate equity investments. Before that, he was a member of the investment team for Wells Fargo's Real Estate Capital Investments group where he underwrote and managed opportunistic joint venture real estate equity investments. Prior to his time at Wells Fargo, he served as an acquisitions intern at The Bascom Group. Mr. Wells holds dual bachelor's degrees in philosophy and religion from Biola University's School of Arts and Sciences, an MBA from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, and an MS in Real Estate Development from the MIT Center for Real Estate.