Carter Validus REIT Begins Selling Shares

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT has begun selling shares for a stock offering in which it hopes to raise between $200 million and $1.75 billion to purchase data centers and medical facilities. In a regulatory filing Tuesday, the new company said its  registration filing had been declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission, allowing Carter Validus to begin selling shares through SC Distributors, which is managing its offering. The firm said it doesn't have any immediate plans to be listed on a public stock exchange.

Carter Validus is based in Tampa and headed by John Carter, a veteran real estate investor and principal of Carter & Associates. The company joins a growing number of real estate investment trusts focused on the data center business. Existing data center REITs include Digital Realty Trust (DLR), DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT) and CoreSite Realty (COR).

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT says it hasn’t yet bought any properties or identified specific assets to acquire. “Our acquisition strategy will focus on the sourcing of acquisitions, investments and developments through existing relationships of T5/Carter with data center users, as well as through traditional channels,” the company said in an SEC filing related to its public offering.

Data centers are part of a broader strategy in which Carter Validus hopes to take advantage of opportunities created by health care reform and its pending impact on medical real estate and IT infrastructure.