Secondary & Tertiary Markets Approach For RIAs
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 What We Do

Secondary & Tertiary Markets

Graceada Partners focuses on secondary and tertiary markets across the Western United States, where long-term demographic trends, structural inefficiencies, and less institutional competition create compelling investment opportunities in multifamily and multi-tenant industrial assets. These markets are defined as metropolitan areas with populations ranging from 500,000 to 4 million, typically characterized by diversified economies, higher affordability, and strong quality-of-life metrics.

 
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Secondary and Tertiary Markets: Growing Capital Interest and Structural Opportunity

Increased Capital Allocations to Private Real Estate

  • Institutional investors and private wealth managers continue to increase allocations to private real estate

  • Increased capital has intensified competition in primary markets, driving investors to seek alpha across new geographies, property types, and strategies

Less Sophisticated Sellers & Operators

  • Assets are often owned by individuals or families and are typically under-managed

  • Limited institutional ownership results in deferred maintenance and below-market in-place rents

Large Untapped Market

  • Secondary and tertiary markets, particularly apartments and industrial parks, represent a large and undercapitalized investment universe with trillions of dollars in potential deal flow

  • Reduced competition relative to primary markets supports more stable pricing and consistent deal flow

  • Ability to achieve opportunistic returns with light, value-add risk

Migration to Smaller Cities

  • Affordability and quality-of-life advantages continue to attract residents and employers to regional markets

  • Decentralization of employment and economic activity beyond primary coastal markets

Demonstrated Performance in Secondary and Tertiary Markets

Over the past two decades - including periods of economic stress - secondary and tertiary markets in the Western United States have demonstrated resilient economic and real estate performance relative to primary markets, often with lower volatility and more stable fundamentals than commonly perceived.

 
 

Economic Outperformance Through Cycles

  • Consistently stronger population and job growth than Western U.S. primary markets regardless of market cycle

  • Higher GDP growth through economic downturns, including approximately 300 bps stronger GDP growth during the GFC (34 bps higher 20-year average)

  • Lower volatility across key economic indicators over long-term periods

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Liquidity and Capital Preservation

  • Transaction volume in sub-$40M deals has been consistently higher with lower volatility than larger primary market transactions

  • Smaller asset sizes experienced less severe peak-to-trough declines during the GFC, pandemic, and recent rate hikes

  • Liquidity characteristics have remained durable across market cycles, contrary to institutional perception

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Real Estate Fundamentals

  • Less volatile development cycles relative to primary markets

  • Consistently stronger net absorption over long periods in workforce housing and industrial

  • Workforce housing rent growth has outperformed primary markets with significantly lower volatility

  • Industrial rent growth was stronger during the GFC and since 2017 compared to primary markets with lower volatility

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 Outsized Opportunity

85 Markets

Number of secondary and tertiary MSAs in the Western United States

60 Million

Population of secondary and tertiary MSAs in the Western United States

$1.6 Trillion

Value of apartments and industrial parks in these MSAs

 Following a Similar Path of Other Niche Strategies

Secondary & Tertiary markets are extremely fragmented and are characterized by smaller average asset sizes and non-institutional owners. 

Property types such as self-storage, mobile home parks, and single family rentals where once thought of in a similar way but have since been institutionalized and attract even the most professional capital.

Secondary & tertiary markets are at the beginning stage of becoming mainstream. Institutional investors will seek exposure to this segment of the market in order to access increased returns and gain further diversification.

 

Self Storage

Mobile Home Parks

Single Family Rentals

 
 
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