📣 The Announcement

Safehold (NYSE: SAFE) closed two new deals to help build affordable housing in California. 🏘️

In June, the company signed ground leases for two Affordable Housing communities that will add 570 units in total once finished. Both sit in California — the Simi Valley area of Ventura County and the San Ysidro area of San Diego County.

👉 In plain terms: Safehold is supplying the land underneath two apartment projects, helping them get built.

🏢 Company Context

👉 In simple terms, Safehold owns land and leases it long-term to the people who own the buildings on top of it — a structure called a "ground lease."

Here's the idea: normally a developer has to buy both the land and the building, which ties up a lot of cash. With a ground lease, Safehold owns the land and rents it to the developer for decades, so the developer needs less money upfront and can put that capital toward the actual construction.

Safehold created the modern ground lease industry back in 2017. It's structured as a real estate investment trust (REIT) — a company that owns income-producing real estate and passes most of its earnings to shareholders — and it works across property types including multifamily, affordable housing, office, industrial, hospitality, student housing and life science.

💥 Why It Matters

Affordable housing projects are notoriously hard to finance — they often have a "gap" between what they cost and the money available. Safehold is positioning its ground leases as a tool to fill that gap and push stalled projects forward.

👉 The signal here is momentum: these two deals deepen a relationship with a major repeat customer and grow Safehold's presence in a sector with strong, unmet demand.

As Steve Wylder, Safehold's Head of Investments, put it: "We're positioning our capital as a tool to fill capital structure gaps and move projects forward."

📊 By The Numbers

The scale of Safehold's affordable-housing push. 📈

• 2 — ground leases closed in June for California affordable housing.
• 570 — total housing units the two projects will deliver upon completion.
• 25+ — ground leases Safehold has now closed on LIHTC developments across California.
• 2017 — the year Safehold created the modern ground lease industry.

🔍 The Details

Both projects are Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) developments. LIHTC is a federal program that gives investors tax credits for funding affordable rental housing — a major way these projects get financed in the U.S.

The two developments are backed by tax-credit equity from U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo, respectively. Both will be built by The Pacific Companies, one of the most active affordable-housing developers in the country and a repeat Safehold customer.

👉 "Repeat customer" is the key phrase — developers coming back is a sign the ground lease model is catching on.

🧠 The Analogy

Think of a food-truck owner who doesn't want to buy an expensive plot of land just to park and sell. Instead, they rent the spot on a long lease and spend their cash on the truck and the food. Safehold is the landowner renting out prime spots — here, so builders can spend their money on the housing itself rather than the dirt beneath it.

🧩 Final Takeaway

Safehold closed two California ground leases in June that will help create 570 affordable-housing units, extending its work with developer The Pacific Companies. It's a small but telling step in Safehold's bet that the ground lease structure can unlock hard-to-finance affordable housing.

Transaction contact: Steve Wylder, Head of Investments, T: 310.315.5566. Ethan Torbati, Vice President, Investments, T: 310.315.5580. IR contact: Pearse Hoffmann, SVP, Head of Corporate Finance, T: 212.930.9400. More at www.safeholdaffordablehousing.com.