A USPS mail carrier in Cedarhurst, Long Island.
Photographer: Lidewij Mulder/BloombergA Real Estate Empire Built on Post Offices Confronts Paper Mail’s Decline
Postal Realty Trust has carved out a niche by investing in US post offices — despite concern that mail delivery won’t long survive in its current form.
Andrew Spodek leads a unique real estate empire grounded on a simple proposition: The US Postal Service will always deliver. Yet the steadfast carrier of letters, parcels and packages has never been under more pressure.
Spodek is the chief executive officer of Postal Realty Trust Inc., the only publicly traded real estate investment trust, or REIT, devoted entirely to postal properties in the US. Its 6.5 million square feet of holdings range from sprawling modern sorting facilities to bucolic rural post offices barely larger than a shed. Around the US, the Postal Service leases more than 25,300 facilities. Postal Realty owns almost 7% of them.