Ely Edwards Enterprises, Inc., a real estate holding and investment trust corporation, was founded on September 14, 2001. The company, named for the founder and CEO, Albert Ely Edwards II, was created for the purpose of establishing a Multi – Service Asset Acquisition / Improvement and Property Management shop. By the mid-way point of 2004, this growing corporation had acquired and developed over $2.5 million in real estate assets and managed over $400,000 in annualized revenue. The newly founded corporation, over its first fiscal year grew in asset accumulation at a rate of 280% with an average asset appreciation of 55% accomplished partly through clever acquisition and effortful property renovation improvements. By the summer of 2005, the company's holdings had grown to 32 properties and roughly $4 million in gross assets.
The grave disaster of Hurricane Katrina forced the company, having sustained heavy damage to the majority of its assets, to hasten into a massive recovery and renovation effort. With more than $2 million in documented flood and wind damage to dozens of properties, the task was immense but the company's assets were well - insured. With a feverish campaign of demolition and reconstruction, 95% of the company's properties were completed and habitable and the housing demand in the region has nearly doubled the rental revenues the company enjoyed just 15 months earlier. Entering November of 2006, Ely Edwards Enterprises, Inc. had added 8 new properties to its asset portfolio increasing its gross real estate holdings to over $6.55M.
Today entering the 2016 business environment, the new landscape of economic challenges and policy changes relative to banking and government await. With nearly 100 commercial and residential units under ownership and management in the greater New Orleans area and new construction projects slated to begin in Q1, Ely Edwards Enterprises is poised to thrive in the new environment. Other holdings include small marine, trucking and aviation assets.
The company’s concentration, as designed by its CEO and staff is to utilize its economic tools and business resources to benefit low-income and at-risk youth and families. Visible in the firm’s investment strategy and civic involvements are it purposeful objectives to support the disadvantaged while growing a thriving business entity in New Orleans. While a for-profit corporation, the company’s participation with a multitude of charitable agencies to aid in housing their homeless and at-risk clients is at the heart of Ely Edwards Enterprises’ purpose.