Chris Merrill, Co-Founder and CEO of Harrison Street, shares his insights from a dynamic career in real estate. He discusses his early experiences as a pioneering investor in Central Europe and how they shaped his unique approach. Chris reveals the challenges he faced in promoting unconventional asset classes like student housing and healthcare. He emphasizes the power of building strong partnerships with operators and the strategic shift towards infrastructure investments, highlighting the importance of innovation and a long-term mindset in achieving success.
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insights INSIGHT
True Innovation Means Doing New Things
Innovation means doing something genuinely new, not just reusing old ideas.
It applies to processes, team alignment, and compensation, not just products or tech.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Early European Real Estate Adventure
Chris Merrill traveled around Central Europe in the mid-90s exploring emerging real estate opportunities.
He wrote a memo proposing to develop a pure play Central European fund, which launched his entrepreneurial career.
insights INSIGHT
Innovation Lowers Risk Through Differentiation
Creating a unique, niche investment strategy reduces competition and perceived risk.
Investors seek differentiated offerings as alternatives to crowded markets.
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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.
(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
The Distribution by Juniper Square