Strategy
Buy well, fix what is broken, rent to families who stay.
The thesis, the market, the criteria, and the six steps every deal goes through.
Investment thesis
Attainable homes on the last affordable streets of a good school zone.
Every good school zone in Atlanta has premium blocks and, a few streets over, houses that still trade under $250,000 because they need work. The fund buys the second kind, inside the same attendance zone, and rents them at market rate to families who want to stay. That is the whole thesis. It is a social conviction, and we believe it is also sound underwriting: a family with children in a school they chose has a strong reason to stay.
Housing near strong schools holds occupancy when the market turns, because the family living there has a reason to stay that has nothing to do with the rent. We do not pay the school premium; we buy below market value on the edge of it and let the rehab close the gap. And we do not discount the rent for the mission. The impact comes from tenure: longer leases, renewal terms that reward staying, and escalators tied to inflation rather than to what the market will bear that year. Lower turnover is where the return and the purpose meet, and it is why the two are not in tension.
Cost-burdened renters
56%
of metro Atlanta renters spend more than 30% of income on housing (Urban Land Institute)
School premium
2.4×
home prices near high-performing schools versus lower-performing districts, metro Atlanta
Housing shortfall
50,000+
estimated shortage of affordable units in the City of Atlanta
Fortune 500 headquarters
18
anchoring metro employment, with growth ahead of the national average
Figures from the fund's 2024 market research, citing the Urban Land Institute, U.S. Census Bureau and Georgia Department of Labor. Market data describes conditions, not the fund's results, and is subject to change.
Atlanta is adding people faster than it is adding homes they can afford.
Where we work
Two or three zones, not a whole metro.
The fund concentrates east of the city, where 1950s and 1960s single-family stock sits inside school attendance zones that still have houses under $250,000 on them.
- Target corridor
- Where the fund is buying now. Streets are selected inside it, not across it.
- Two and five miles
- Everything the fund owns should be reachable in one morning. Concentration is the operating model, not a limitation.
- The perimeter and I-20
- Drawn from public map data. The corridor sits inside the perimeter, on transit, minutes from downtown employment.
Illustrative. The map shows where the fund looks, not what it owns. It does not identify any property, any holding, or any specific school.
A rail line is the difference between a job you can reach and one you cannot.
Why Atlanta, why now
A growing city with a housing gap that sits right next to its schools.
Atlanta is adding households faster than it is adding homes they can afford, and in our reading the pressure falls hardest on neighborhoods with good school access and transit. That gap is where we work. Recent zoning proposals and first-time-buyer programs are moving demand toward exactly these areas, and we would rather own the housing before that shift is fully priced in than after.
Market
Two or three school attendance zones at a time, in-town and first-ring
Chosen where school access, transit and household demand overlap
Asset types
Single-family homes and small to mid-size apartment buildings
Bought below market value, rehabilitated, then held as attainable rentals or refinanced
Edge
Local knowledge, a community-first underwriting model, and a general partner with his own capital at risk
Not a national allocator parachuting into a ZIP code
Figure 1
The cost of shelter has outrun the income that pays for it.
Set every series to 100 in the year 2000 and the divergence is plain. Atlanta house prices are up 176 per cent. Atlanta rents are up 112 per cent. The median Georgia household earns 94 per cent more. Owning has moved furthest out of reach, and renting is not far behind it.
Sources. House prices: All-Transactions House Price Index for the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Alpharetta, GA metropolitan statistical area, Federal Housing Finance Agency, annual average of quarterly values. Rents: Consumer Price Index, rent of primary residence, Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, annual average. Income: median household income in Georgia, U.S. Census Bureau. All series retrieved from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) on 22 September 2026 and indexed by us to 2000 = 100. Series are nominal and are not adjusted for inflation; indexing to a common base year is what makes them comparable. Figures describe the metropolitan and state economy. They are not a statement about the fund, and nothing here is a projection or an indication of any return.
Strategy
Patient capital, applied with local knowledge and a clear process.
Value-add, and patient. We buy well, fix what is broken, rent to families who stay, and hold or refinance on our own timeline. No forced exits, no leverage that only works in a good year.
- Local expertiseDeep roots in Atlanta and a working understanding of how its neighborhoods differ block by block, and where zoning and policy are moving.
- Data-driven underwritingMarket analysis, valuation and forecasting built on measured inputs, with performance tracked against the underwriting rather than the story.
- Comprehensive diligenceLegal, physical, environmental and community review on every asset, beyond the standard financial assessment.
- Flexible exitHold, refinance or sell as conditions dictate. The plan serves the return, not the other way round.
- Investor communicationLimited partners are kept informed about what the fund owns, why, and how it is performing.
- Property types
- Single-family homes, and apartment buildings of roughly eight to fifty units in the same neighborhoods. Houses build the portfolio street by street; buildings add scale and let the fund serve more households per dollar of overhead.
- Geography
- A small number of Atlanta school attendance zones at a time, in-town and first-ring, with strong school access and transit. Concentration is deliberate.
- Purchase price
- Houses typically under $250,000. Buildings priced per unit against replacement cost, on the same principle: bought below market value so there is equity in the deal on day one.
- Condition
- Value-add. Deferred maintenance, under-managed, estates, or mis-priced relative to the street.
- Hold period
- Typically three to seven years, with refinancing used to return capital where the asset supports it.
- Sourcing
- Estates, tired landlords and off-market sales brought by a broker network built over a decade of buying and lending in these neighborhoods, plus wholesalers who know the criteria. See Partners.
- What we pass on
- Ground-up development, speculative land, luxury product, student and short-term rental conversions, and anything that only works with rents the neighborhood cannot support.
One underwriting
What makes a market attractive to Conqord.
We do not choose an investment and then look for an impact story. Both columns are in the model before we make an offer.
- Financial considerations
- Basis relative to appraised value on completion. Rental demand and rent comps without growth assumptions. Replacement cost. Supply constraint in the zone. Rehabilitation economics and contingency. Long-tenure occupancy characteristics. Exit and refinancing optionality.
- Context considerations
- Housing attainability on the street and in the zone. Public-school attendance-zone access. Displacement pressure and recent price velocity. Neighborhood continuity and owner-occupancy mix. Proximity to employment, transit and community infrastructure. Whether responsible ownership preserves useful housing stock rather than converting it.
Mission defines the opportunity set. Discipline determines the investment.
Selection method
Five tests, in order.
The thesis is only as good as the filter. Each test is applied before the next, and a property that fails one never reaches the one after it. Most do not get past the second.
-
01
The zone
Public attendance-zone maps, not ZIP codes. The elementary and middle school must rate above the district average on the state's own accountability measures, and the zone must have transit or a commute under thirty minutes to a major employment center.
-
02
The price band
Within that zone, the streets where houses still trade under $250,000. If the whole zone has moved above the band, we pass on the zone rather than stretch the thesis.
-
03
The street
Majority owner-occupied. No concentration of vacant or investor-held homes. Rental comparables that carry the underwriting without assuming rent growth.
-
04
The building
Three bedrooms or more, because the tenant is a family. Structurally sound, with defects that are priced rather than hidden. Roof, systems, foundation and water are the four that end a deal.
-
05
The basis
Purchase price plus scoped rehabilitation must land below the appraised value on completion. If it does not, there is no equity on day one, and we do not buy.
What never gets through
- Flood zone
- Unpermitted additions
- Title we cannot clear
- A rehab scope above what the rent supports
- A street where we would be the third investor-owner
Rehabilitation standard
One scope, every house.
A family judges a home in the first ten minutes. The standard is written so that it passes that test without a single conversation about it.
- Envelope and systems first
- Roof, electrical, plumbing and HVAC are brought to a condition that will not need capital for the hold period. Cosmetics wait until the building is sound.
- Efficiency in every scope
- LED lighting, low-flow fixtures, efficient HVAC and insulation where the building needs it. Lower operating cost for the fund and a lower bill for the tenant.
- Durable finishes
- Hard-surface flooring, solid-surface counters, quality hardware. Chosen for a ten-year tenancy, not for a listing photograph.
- Safety and code
- Permitted work, inspected work, working detectors, secure doors and windows, and exterior lighting. Non-negotiable and documented before the first lease.
- Scoped before close
- Every scope is written, priced and given a contingency before the fund owns the house. Changes after close require a reason, in writing.
Two different properties, photographed years apart. They illustrate the condition the fund buys and the standard it rehabilitates to. Neither is a holding of the fund.
And the building two streets over, where eight families already live.
Capital structure
Attainable housing is built out of more than one kind of money.
On the single-family side, conventional capital does the work. On the multifamily side it rarely does, and pretending otherwise is how a fund ends up raising rents to make its own model close.
- Conventional equity and debt
- Houses, and buildings where the basis is low enough that the rents already work. The fund's own capital and its lenders.
- Tax credit and bond structures
- Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, tax-exempt multifamily bonds and state credit programs are the instruments that make deeper affordability arithmetic work on an apartment building. They are specialised, they require experienced counsel and a syndicator, and the fund will pursue them with those partners rather than alone.
- Public and philanthropic layers
- HOME funds, CDBG, housing authority participation and local tax allocation district awards. In metro Atlanta these are actively funding the corridors the fund is looking at. They carry compliance obligations, and those obligations are the point: they are what keeps a building attainable after the improvements are made.
- Mixed-income by design
- A building where every unit is subsidised is harder to finance and more fragile to hold. We believe mixed-income is the more durable structure, and it is the one that keeps a neighborhood mixed.
- What we will not do
- Take a public subsidy and then engineer out of the affordability period. Use an improvement budget as the reason a sitting tenant has to leave.
The fund has not yet closed a transaction using these structures. This describes the approach it intends to take on multifamily and the partners it would take it with, not experience already accumulated.
How a deal moves
Six steps, the same every time.
Repeatable is the point. A process that changes with the deal is not a process. The fourth step is where most of the money and most of the risk sit, so it is set out in full underneath.
Step 04, in detail
What "rehabilitate" actually means.
A single-family scope is sequenced before the fund owns the house, and the order is not negotiable. Structure is settled before anything cosmetic is touched, because a kitchen installed above a failing roof is money spent twice.
Illustrative, and drawn from how the General Partner has scoped single-family rehabilitations in metro Atlanta. Thirteen weeks is the intended sequence for a sound house, not a commitment. Actual duration varies with the permitting authority, the condition found once walls are open, and trade availability. Apartment buildings run to a different and longer schedule, phased around sitting tenants.
Conqord Capital · Private real estate investment fund, Atlanta
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