Encore Housing Opportunity Fund, a private equity fund based in San Francisco, will launch is second opportunistic fund in July 2012. 

Encore Housing Opportunity Fund II will focus on investing in non-performing residential and mixed-use real estate, primarily in California, Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Texas. 

Fund II marks a geographic expansion from Fund I, which focused its investments in California and Florida.
 
Encore Housing Opportunity Fund I raised USD160m in equity commitments by its April 2011 closing and is fully committed with investments in 17 residential and mixed use projects throughout California and Florida.

Fund II will focus on entitled land, partially developed projects, finished lots and multi-family real estate.  The initial closing is expected to be between USD100m and USD200m and will include a mix of institutional and high net worth investors.
 
“Encore’s strategy for opportunistic investing in residential real estate is simple: focus on infill submarkets with strong supply/demand dynamics; underwrite conservatively with no price appreciation; and leverage our relationships and insight to source high quality off-market deals. This proved very successful in Fund I and we see no reason to change for Fund II,” says Encore’s chief operating officer, Oscar Vasquez.
 
Another feature of Fund I that Encore will carry over to Fund II is its focus on capital preservation in light of ongoing economic uncertainty. Encore Fund II will take no leverage on land, and will only invest in specific zip codes where prices have stabilised for at least one year.