CME Real Estate is a privately held real estate investment firm with assets located in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The real estate is comprised of multi-family, retail, hospitality, and land.
Founder and owner Michael Conners has spent over 25 years sourcing, underwriting, bidding, financing, and owning commercial real estate on both an institutional level and a personal entrepreneurial level.
For lack of a better phrase, CME Real Estate started as a “side hustle” over many years while Mike was studying for his MBA at Babson College and working full-time first at TD Bank and then Claremont Companies. During this time, Mike worked to apply the institutional investing knowledge gained at TD Bank and Claremont and apply this knowledge to acquire non-institutional real estate such as apartments, suburban retail, short term vacation rentals, ground leases and land.
The company’s investment philosophy is to locate and purchase assets below replacement cost that are “broke” but are worth physically “fixing” due to characteristics such as a favorable location, high barriers to entry, supply and demand imbalance, physical uniqueness, and/or permitting upside. The capital structure on new acquisitions are typically 60-70% bank leverage with internal equity making up the remaining 30-40%. Acquisitions and assets are valued on their long -term ability to provide consistent cash flow growth and increasing return on equity.