Chris Merrill, Co-Founder and CEO of Harrison Street, joins Brandon Sedloff to explore a career defined by risk-taking, innovation, and a steadfast belief in building differentiated real estate strategies. The conversation traces Chris’s early career in real estate through his formative years at Heitman, where he became one of the first Western investors to focus exclusively on Central Europe. That experience would inform the thesis behind Harrison Street—an investment firm centered on demographic-driven, need-based asset classes like student housing, medical offices, and self-storage. Chris shares how Harrison Street emerged from a 50-50 partnership with Motorola’s former CEO Chris Galvin, and how its success has hinged on developing deep operator relationships, a repeatable process for innovation, and a long-term perspective on risk and value creation.
They discuss:
- Why building a “pure play” Central European fund shaped his thinking on innovation and differentiation
- The early resistance to student housing, senior living, and self-storage as institutional asset classes
- How Harrison Street built an edge through proprietary scorecards and diversified operator relationships
- Why vertical integration was never the right strategy for Harrison Street’s alternative real estate focus
- How infrastructure and on-campus partnerships are fueling the next phase of growth
This episode is a masterclass in how to spot arbitrage opportunities and scale a business by staying contrarian.
Links:
Chris on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-merrill-006b243/
Harrison Street - https://harrisonst.com/
Brandon on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bsedloff/
Juniper Square - https://www.junipersquare.com/
Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:39) - Chris’ background and career
(00:12:22) - Capital raising in the mid-90s
(00:15:25) - Founding Harrison Street
(00:22:11) - What Harrison Street looks like today
(00:23:24) - The evolution of Alternatives within Private Real Estate
(00:25:26) - Investing strategies
(00:32:42) - Milestones from the last 2 decades
(00:34:46) - Failures
(00:37:35) - What best-in-class operating partners look like
(00:42:43) - Vertically integrated vs. allocator models
(00:44:30) - Pivoting into infrastructure
(00:48:19) - Making an ownership shift
(00:52:16) - The intersection of innovation and Real Estate
