Cerberus Joins the Wall Street Landlord Club

The investment firm, with about $25 billion under management, is acquiring Five Ten Capital, a rental business with more than 1,500 houses in states including Florida, Illinois and Texas, said two people with knowledge of the deal. New York-based Cerberus also is hiring Five Ten’s founder, Rob Bloemker, to oversee the rental business and play a role in broader mortgage investments, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Two years after it started lending to landlords, Cerberus will now be one itself, betting that it can use financial-market expertise to boost returns even after a 24 percent gain nationally in home prices from a low in December 2011. “Now people are able to come in and build debt into the equation, whereas, for the pioneers in the space, this was all being done with equity,” Rich Ford, a managing director in Jefferies Group LLC’s real estate investment-banking group, said in a telephone interview.



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