Leading Voices in Real Estate

This week Matt’s guest is John McLaren, President and Chief Operating Officer of Sun Communities, a REIT and the largest owner/operator of manufactured housing communities. John and Matt explore the different facets of the manufactured housing business in general, as well as a deep dive into Sun Communities’ business. John lends particular insight to manufactured housing as part of the affordable housing toolkit and its ability to address the financial and social needs of people from a variety of income levels. On the subject of manufactured housing providing different options for housing affordability, we also refer you to a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post from a friend of Matt’s, Daniel Weisfield, from Three Pillars Communities, about misperceptions about the manufactured housing industry, its overall impact on housing affordability for its residents as well as having inevitable rent increases in the business. Here is a link to Daniel’s post via LinkedIn…..Before Matt and John went on air for this episode, John shared that he unintentionally fell into the real estate and mobile home park businesses. He went on to say that his career has been a great blessing in which he has achieved success, and it’s clear from the way he talks about it that he has found a great deal of meaning and purpose in his work. Matt connected with this because he often feels the same way — he fell into real estate early on and then fell into recruiting mid-way through his career, both of which he grew to love. Sometimes a deep sense of purpose comes from career paths you don’t expect, so it’s worth it to keep a flexible mindset.The heart of this conversation lies in John’s vigilant commitment to the communities he serves. He believes that for a community to thrive, it must be built on a foundation of stewardship. Everything from relationships with manufacturers to innovating more aesthetically pleasing housing is done with the local community and its member’s quality of life in mind. Intentionality of this degree is one of many reasons why Sun Communities enjoys around a 99% resident retention rate — an example to which many in the industry should aspire.ResourcesSun CommunitiesLetter to Editor of Washington Post from Three Pillar Communities on LinkedIn

This week’s podcast guest is Majora Carter, a real estate visionary, developer, and author who is dedicated to revitalizing communities through talent retention. Her new book “ Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move Out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One,” pulls from her deeply personal experience in her own community, the South Bronx.The belief that they have it within themselves to succeed is the cornerstone of the culture that communities must establish to keep their best and brightest asset: their people. Persistent poverty is a problem that is self-replicating for low-status communities, but Majora says the solution lies in reimagining the measuring stick of success. Instead of success being defined by how far away you can get from your hometown, it should be defined by how you can transform it and impact it. This is a critical shift. While this conversation highlights the tangible benefits and opportunities that exist for today’s neighborhoods and homegrown entrepreneurs, the real takeaway is how these transformations create ripple effects that last for generations. Looking beyond the immediate task at hand to the broader view of what certain decisions and relationships, investments and developments can do is a central theme of the Leading Voices podcast and the larger Terra/ZRG vision.ResourcesMajora Carter GroupReclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better OneGreening the ghetto3 stories of local eco-entrepreneurship

This week Matt is joined by Bjarke Ingels, Roni Bahar, and Nick Chim from Nabr, a real estate development company specializing in sustainable, customizable apartments. Nabr’s mission is to address the housing crisis with a unique approach: a business platform that creates, at scale, well designed, attainably-priced apartment units on a homeownership model.Its founding team comes well-qualified for the task. Bjarke is one of the world’s leading architects and the founder of BIG, the Bjarke Ingels Group architectural firm; Roni came to Nabr via his role as WeWork’s Director of Development; and Nick boasts a background with Sidewalk Labs and Google.The trio reveals that the secret to Nabr’s business model and designs is that they are inspired by consumer productization. Too many developers build cookie-cutter housing that is not consumer-friendly in terms of technology, delivery, and design. Nabr is breaking the mold by pulling inspiration from consumer companies like Lego, Tesla, and Apple. Matt highlights a throughline between his conversation with Bjarke, Roni, and Nick and the Terra Search merger with ZRG Partners, as both are intent on building businesses of scale with a bespoke consulting model.

This week, Matt is joined by Joe Margolis, CEO of Extra Space Storage, one of the largest providers of self-storage in the U.S. Joe explores the drivers of the exponential growth the industry has seen in the past few years, the importance of company culture and customer care, and why self-storage is ultimately about hope.Matt shares an interesting connection with Extra Space. His wife is a member of its board and was instrumental in helping raise Extra Space’s first institutional capital. They have seen from both inside and out that Extra Space is a company that cares deeply about providing an excellent customer experience and maintaining a family-centered culture. Joe illustrates this point with a story from his first week at Extra Space. He’d moved from the East Coast to Utah for the job, and at the end of the work day asked an employee to run some numbers for him. Joe expected the employee to jump to it right away, and was shocked when he took the numbers and went home to have dinner with his family. He learned quickly that family time was a priority for the business and that not everything needed to be treated as an emergency.Joe shares the diverse industry landscape that comprises self-storage. While Extra Space and its five top competitors make up about 30% of the country’s storage facilities, the majority of the storage facilities in the country are still owned by smaller or regional owners, who usually have a portfolio of two to fifteen stores. Thus, self-storage is on the more fragmented side of the real estate industry and will be fascinating to follow as its demand continues to increase. 

This week, Matt is joined by Stephen Ross, Founder and Chairman of Related Companies, one of the country’s premier real estate development organizations. Stephen talks about their current mega-project, Hudson Yards, where we recorded the episode, the breadth of Related’s activities and both his personal business and philanthropic interests, including as owner of the Miami Dolphins NFL team.One of Stephen’s current projects takes the form of revitalizing downtown Detroit through a major new development. Stephen grew up in Detroit until he was 15, when his family moved to Florida. As soon as he had the chance, he moved back for college before planting himself more permanently in New York City. Detroit has been through changes and challenges since Stephen’s days there, but he still sees a bright future for it. His hope is that this new development will serve as a catalyst for a renaissance of the whole city.Stephen brings a trove of experience and a vision of real estate’s future to today’s episode. His desire to create ventures that matter is defined by mega projects like Hudson Yards and the Time Warner Center in New York, as well as Related’s ongoing business in affordable housing — an area which Stephen acknowledges is one of America’s biggest current needs.

This week Matt is joined by Bob DeWitt and Greg Bates from GID, the Boston-based, vertically integrated real estate investment manager. Bob is Vice Chairman and former CEO of GID and Greg is currently CEO and President. The pair tell the story of generational transitions in the real estate business through GID’s unique lens. Bob recalls transforming the business in the 90’s and early 2000’s as GID, and others, institutionalized their businesses. This opened doors to significant professionalization and scaling in both the apartment sector and commercial real estate. GID underwent another major growth spurt more recently when it has scaled to compete with the new huge private equity investment shops as part of real estate’s transition from an alternative asset class into a primary asset class. Greg foresees operational excellence becoming valued over capital appreciation as a measure of success as the market continues to shift.The theme of transition continues with Matt’s firm, Terra Search Partners, which has recently become part of the global talent advisory firm ZRG Partners, where Matt will become global co-head of their real estate practice. This merger will enable ZRG to grow its real estate practice globally and further Terra Search Partners’ long standing mission to help shape the future of the real estate industry.

This week, Matt is joined by Doug Yearley, CEO and Chairman of Toll Brothers, widely recognized as the most admired homebuilder in the nation. Doug’s leadership and extensive experience in growth management and expansion offers important insight. From the current supply chain issues to strategies for exiting the pandemic, he highlights the opportunities and challenges on the table. He also touches on the unique juxtaposition of a homebuilding business and the corporate, client facing culture required to meet the needs at the luxury end of production. Matt shares a surprising but significant connection with the Toll Brothers’ founder, Bob Toll. Growing up, they both attended Maine’s Camp Powhatan, albeit at different times. Bob went on to acquire Camp Powhatan which he has helped nurture as it transformed into an international peace center. Now called Seeds of Peace, the old camp is a space for children from opposing sides in conflict areas to camp together and foster open dialogue, relationships and understanding. Seeds of Peace serves as a powerful example of philanthropy done right, and the kind of values the Toll Brothers culture is built upon. What it takes to create a “best places to work” company has been a strong throughline over the course of this season, and this episode with Doug is no exception. His desire and ability to create a culture and business platform that transcends the transactional side of the real estate business is marked by determination and intention ripe with inspiration.Resourceswww.seedsofpeace.orgwww.tollbrothers.com

An internationally recognized leader in developing innovative strategies to end homelessness and strengthen communities Rosanne Haggerty joins Matt on this week’s Leading Voices in Real Estate. As President and Chief Executive Officer of Community Solutions, Rosanne oversees a nonprofit that assists cEmmunities throughout the U.S. and internationally in solving the complex housing problems facing their most vulnerable residents. Community Solutions also leads “Built for Zero”, a movement of more than 90 cities and counties using data to radically change how they work and make homelessness rare. As a 2001 MacArthur Genius, Rosanne broadened her work in this space after spending decades working in supportive housing. She formally established Community Solutions in 2011, and in 2021 The MacArthur Foundation provided an additional $100M grant to further develop her methodology. While homelessness is a step removed from our typical Leading Voices conversations, this discussion provides a perspective on a societal issue that ripples across real estate and how our industry can address homelessness.Rosanne was a Japan Society Public Policy Fellow, and is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Ashoka Senior Fellow, Hunt Alternative Fund Prime Mover and the recipient of honors including the Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism from the Rockefeller Foundation, Social Entrepreneur of the year from the Schwab Foundation, Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian Design Museum’s National Design Award and Independent Sector’s John W. Gardner Leadership Award. She is a graduate of Amherst College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.Resources“Homelessness is Solvable” – Rosanne’s podcast interview with Malcolm Gladwell (June 2019)

In this episode, we take a visit back to Matt’s conversation from February 2018 with Keith Oden, Co-Founder and President of Camden Property Trust. Camden is one of the largest multifamily REITs in the U.S. that owns, develops, acquires, sells, and manages apartment communities with a current portfolio of 171 properties containing 58,300 units. We revisit this conversation since the themes of this pre-Covid conversation still deeply resonate. Camden was one of the first REITs to use its scale and business platform to invest meaningfully in technology and it also “took a stand” to create an outstanding culture. At the time of the interview, Camden was celebrating 11th straight year (now on its 14th straight year and currently rated 8th on the list) as one of Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For”​, an auspicious accomplishment for the first real estate company to achieve any ranking on that list, which lifted the bar for the overall industry.Keith was co-founder of Camden’s predecessor companies in 1982 and has served Camden as President and Trust Manager since 1993. As a Principal Executive Officer and Director, Keith drives Camden’s strategic initiatives, leads the property operations and corporate support services, and promotes the company’s culture.After completing his Masters Degree in Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin, Keith began his career as a management consultant with the then-public accounting firm Deloitte, Haskins and Sells in 1979. He joined Century Development Corporation, one of the most active real estate development firms in the Southwest in 1981, and later became Director of Financial Planning.For more than twenty years, Keith has been committed to developing one of the best multifamily companies in the industry. Under his purview, Camden successfully completed the mergers of three public real estate companies: Paragon, Oasis Residential, and Summit Properties in 1997, 1998 and 2005, respectively. Keith’s work was instrumental to the assimilation of these three companies into Camden’s culture.Keith is a member of the Executive Council of the Center for Real Estate Finance at the University of Texas and serves as advisor, financial supporter, guest lecturer and panelist for the faculty and students pursuing their MBAs in real estate finance. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and a licensed real estate broker in the State of Texas.

Co-CEO and a Founder of ACORE Capital, Chris Tokarski joins Matt on this week’s Leading Voices to talk about the CRE debt business in general and, specifically talk about the private debt providers, like ACORE, which have become a major part of the market, particularly in construction and transitional lending since the Global Financial Crisis. With approximately $17 billion of assets under management, ACORE is one of the largest private debt providers focused on commercial real estate, originating and managing first mortgages, B-notes, mezzanine debt, and preferred equity, deploying over $28 billion in more than 375 transactions since inception in 2015. Chris also talks about his early start in the business at Nomura—the then disrupter in the CRE finance business, meeting his current partners there and their path together at several firms before co-founding, and co-leading ACORE.Chris has over 25 years of experience in leadership roles with large, national lenders, including four years as Chief Credit Officer for Starwood Property Trust, and has served as an advisor on workouts and other financing solutions through multiple cycles. Chris has personally invested in commercial real estate throughout his career.The Commercial Observer has honored Chris in their annual listing ‘The 50 Most Important Figures of Commercial Real Estate Finance’, ranking him in the top 15 for the past 5 years.Chris earned a B.A. degree from Brown University with a double concentration in Business Economics and Organizational Behavior and Management.