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Alice Youngbar
Rob Wilkins
Jonathan Treble
Michael Tillman
Blake Taylor
Zachary Streit
Doug Stockman
Megan Slocum
Nate Sittema
Masoud Shojaee
Jason R. Shepard
Jim Schoonmaker
Elie Rieder
Richard J. Rennell Jr.
Marc Renard
Jay Remillard
Remy Raisner
Dan Price
Mike Ortlip
Georgianna W. Oliver
Will Moxley
Andrew Mest
Lev Mavashev
Will Mathews
Tyler Marshall
Jamison Manwaring
Mark Mandala
A. David Lynd
Chris Luo
Rachel Lubeck
Jeffrey E. Levine
Garrett Lee
Leah La Masney
Deborah La Franchi
Erin D. Knight
Scott Kirchhoff
Marcia Kaufman
Andrew S. Kadish
Andrew Jenkins
Whitson Huffman
Scott Hoppa
Adam Hirsch
Shawn Henry
Marc B. Heller
John Harrington
Edd Hamzanlui
Chad Hagwood
Tyler Hague
Asher Gunter
Eric G. Greenfield
Jeffrey Goldberg
Susan L. Gerock
Seth Gellis
Nadia Geller
Taryn Fielder
Brock Emmetsberger
Allan Edelson
Christopher Cruz
Hollie A. Croft
Cindy Cooke
Chad A. Colley
Brendan Coleman
Lela Cirjakovic
Jennifer K. Cassell
Jonathan H. Canter
Sean Burton
Mary Boehmler
Taylor Avakian
Stephanie A. Anderson
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As a partner in McGuireWoods LLP’s New York and Century City offices, Alice Youngbar co-leads a team that focuses on representing lenders financing multifamily properties through the Fannie Mae Delegated Underwriting & Servicing program and the Freddie Mac Optigo program. The team also represents clients in affordable housing, green financing, moderate rehabilitation, student housing and manufactured housing loan programs, including properties financed under Freddie Mac Targeted Affordable Housing and Fannie Mae Multifamily Affordable Housing guidelines. Youngbar’s practice focuses on representation of institutional lenders on commercial real estate loans intended for securitization and sale in the secondary market with an emphasis on loans originated under the Fannie Mae DUS and Freddie Mac Seller/Servicer programs. She has assisted in more than $23 billion in loans during the past three years, including representing an American bank holding company as a Freddie Mac Optigo Network lender in connection with a $1.1 billion financing to support the acquisition of 42 multifamily properties in 11 different states by a global investment fund. She also represented an American bank holding company in a Freddie Mac Structured Credit Facility loan with a fixed rate tranche and a floating rate tranche. The $786.5 million facility will finance the $1 billion acquisition of 41 multifamily properties in New York and New Jersey, with 65% of the units being affordable housing. Youngbar is involved in multiple industry organizations, including the CRE Finance Council, CREFC Women’s Network. New York County Lawyers Association and the New York State Bar Association.
Alice Youngbar
As California’s housing shortage continues to be a challenge, Affirmed Housing VP of Northern California Rob Wilkins cuts through the red tape that hinders housing development to deliver inclusive, safe and sustainable communities for the region’s most vulnerable and at-risk populations. Working with his team, Wilkins delivers impactful projects that enhance the region’s landscape and support the state’s vitality. His skillset has brought several unique projects online, including the City of San Jose’s first 100% permanent supportive housing development, Villas on the Park, and the city’s first projects to leverage streamlining laws SB 35 and AB 2162, Vela and Vitalia. He is leading the development of two notable transit-oriented projects that will add hundreds of affordable homes to the region’s housing stock, and he continues to pioneer new ways to deliver critically needed housing resources. Wilkins heads Affirmed Housing’s Northern California division, which includes the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, where he is responsible for the company’s mixed-use, mixed-income portfolio. He oversees all phases of Affirmed Housing’s affordable and supportive housing projects within the region, from sourcing new acquisition opportunities and leading purchase negotiations to initial concept through completion, ensuring a seamless and efficient process. Beyond getting projects funded, penciled and built, Wilkins dedicates time to educating audiences on topics related to affordable housing development, and he has been called upon as a media resource to discuss local ballot measures, transit-oriented development and combating NIMBYism. Wilkins also serves on an alumni board for his alma mater, Yale University, and he volunteers his time at Second Harvest Food Bank.
Rob Wilkins
Jonathan Treble has tackled one of the more time-consuming aspects of amenity management in the multifamily space by simplifying replenishment processes. It started in 2014, when Treble set out on a mission to make printing more convenient. He founded PrintWithMe, a network of pay-per-use printer stations initially positioned in coffee shops and cafes. Feedback suggested self-serve printing had value in the multifamily industry, prompting Treble to develop Print Allowance technology to give property managers the ability to limit the number of free pages each resident can print and automatically charge them for any overage. PrintWithMe’s technology also tracks paper and toner levels, ensuring additional supplies are automatically sent when they start to run low, and the WithMe team handles all support and device troubleshooting. The successful integration of PrintWithMe into the multifamily landscape paved the way for an adjacent venture, SipWithMe, providing coffee services in residential spaces, and Cup Allowance technology, which has helped hundreds of communities regain control of the cost of their coffee amenities and cut operational expenses by up to 60%. As founder and CEO of WithMe Inc., Treble is responsible for directing the company’s overall vision and strategy, forming and maintaining strategic partnerships, overseeing product innovation and enhancements, and establishing WithMe’s expertise and thought leadership in the tech-enabled amenity space. He is also passionate about recruiting and mentoring top talent while creating an inclusive, collaborative and innovative company culture. Under Treble’s leadership, WithMe has grown exponentially during the past decade, and the company’s solutions can be found in more than 4,000 multifamily locations, serving more than one million apartment homes.
Jonathan Treble
Since PTM Partners’ inception, CEO and chief investment officer Michael Tillman has spearheaded the firm’s development strategy within Qualified Opportunity Zones. When determining where to develop, Tillman identifies opportunities where the firm can achieve target returns while still ensuring rental rates are attainable for at least 65% of the population living within a 1-mile radius. The firm’s thesis is designing thoughtful buildings with smaller unit sizes, high-end finishes, resort-style amenities, and a focus on health and wellness. Through Opportunity Zone investing, Tillman and PTM have transformed otherwise overlooked areas and spurred growth beyond real estate for businesses, culture and arts. PTM has executed in key markets like Miami, Washington D.C., North Virginia, and St. Petersburg, FL. He brings an extensive background in private equity, asset management and accounting to his role. His day-to-day tasks include strategizing, visioning and identifying new opportunities for investing, all while implementing a unique horizontal structure designed to offer employees the chance to become experts in all aspects of the business. Projects underway include Watermark in Washington D.C., a 452-unit multifamily adaptive reuse development located on a 2.6-acre waterfront parcel in Buzzard Point; and Viridium in Woodbridge, Virginia, a 318-unit, class A multifamily mid-rise building preserving more than 40% of the site area as open space, including landscaped green areas, recreational facilities and the construction of a trail system. PTM recently announced it secured a $63 million senior loan for Viridium. Tillman sits on the executive advisory board of the University of Miami’s Real Estate Development and Urbanism program, where he also serves as a guest lecturer on real estate development, real estate finance and sustainable development practices.
Michael Tillman
Known for his advanced holistic approach to development in Central North Texas, Blake Taylor has become a transformative leader in the multifamily real estate sector. Taylor is SVP and regional development partner for JPI’s central region overseeing the entire lifecycle of multifamily projects. His responsibilities include strategic planning to enhance site acquisition, project design and construction management and ensures each project aligns with JPI’s quality and sustainability standards. His role also involves extensive stakeholder engagement. Taylor’s projects incorporate sustainable practices, and he advocates for community-centric designs that enhance the quality of life for residents. In the past three years, Taylor spearheaded the development of more than 2,000 multifamily units in Central North Texas, significantly contributing to the region’s housing stock. Notable projects include Jefferson Eastbranch and Jefferson Boardwalk/1900, which have been recognized for their architectural excellence. Jefferson Eastbranch was a failed office development, and under Taylor’s leadership, JPI relocated power lines and utilities and improved a subterranean garage. Jefferson Boardwalk/1900 was once a landfill that Taylor and his team transformed into homes that provide significant value to the community. His efforts have earned him multiple industry awards, including the NAHB Multifamily Pillars of the Industry award. He serves on the board of the Central North Texas Real Estate Council and is a mentor for young professionals in the industry. Taylor is also a passionate advocate for affordable housing, volunteering with Habitat for Humanity to help provide homes for those in need. His involvement extends to local educational initiatives, where he collaborates with schools to promote STEM education and career opportunities in real estate development.
Blake Taylor
Zachary Streit has accumulated 20 years of CRE investment advisory experience structuring deals across the capital stack, including Co-GP and LP equity financings, mezzanine and preferred equity financings, and non-recourse stretch-senior and senior debt financings for development, value-add and stabilized multifamily projects. He spent nearly a decade in institutional principal investment, which laid the foundation for a career as a capital advisor. His experience reaching back to the Great Financial Crisis has been critical in how he advises multifamily clients through CRE cycles. Throughout his career he has closed more than $5 billion in CRE financings, including $1.09 billion in multifamily. His previous roles include co-founder and managing partner of WAY Capital, SVP at George Smith Partners, managing director of originations for Anchor Loans LP, VP of originations at Colony American Finance, founder and president of Streit lending and investment associate at Aviva Investors’ global real estate multimanager group. He founded his own strategic equity and debt capital advisory firm, Priority Capital Advisory, this year to deliver a boutique, white-glove experience in financing some of the industry’s most complex transactions. In its first month of operations, PCA closed on more than $85 million in multifamily financing. As president, he leads a team of five. He is a member of the ULI Small Scale Development Product Council and the Jewish Federation Real Estate and Construction Advisory Council. He serves on the board of the City of Hope’s Los Angeles Real Estate Council.
Zachary Streit
Doug Stockman has dedicated much of his career to pursuing prefabricated components and modular construction as developer-beneficial solutions that don’t have to compromise architectural design. He envisions factory-built components as the backbone of multifamily’s future, particularly in areas that have modular manufacturers for expedited delivery. As a partner and director of architecture at Helix Architecture + Design, Stockman oversees all design efforts in workplace, higher education, civic and hospitality. Leveraging 21 years of specialized multifamily design experience, Stockman partners with developers to create buildings that creatively deliver solid ROI and counsels therm on the financing, coordination, logistics and timing of modular construction. He led a prominent development on Kansas City’s Main Street, the first of its kind to use pre-manufactured residential modules. The process dramatically decreased construction time and increased sustainability. His current priority Kansas City project converts a 100-year-old commercial building listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which has been vacant for 20 years, into workforce housing. Helix and developer Cordish Co. identified a need for rents beginning at $700. Helix’s initial design included 117 units but by optimizing the plans with community spaces, Helix fit 139 apartments. Stockman has been involved in more than 50 completed multifamily projects, with additional multifamily/mixed-use projects either commissioned or under construction. One of three partners at Helix, Stockman is involved in all business decisions and played a pivotal role in Helix’s decision to open a second office after more than 30 years at a single Kansas City location. Assessing opportunities in the Midwest, South and Mountain states, Stockman and his partners identified Denver as an emerging market, particularly for multifamily. Helix opened its Denver office late last year, under his direction.
Doug Stockman
Megan Slocum has led Grubb Properties’ Link Apartments brand multifamily development team since 2019. With 30 years of experience, she has been a driving force in the company’s expansion beyond its roots in the Southeast to New York City, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Washington D.C. In New York, construction is underway at two sites, one in Long Island City and the other in the Financial District of Manhattan. For both sites, the company leveraged the 421-a Affordable New York program. In addition, Link Apartments QPN in Long Island City, participated in the Zoning for Accessibility program, gaining additional density in exchange for adding ADA access in the attached subway station. This marked only the second use of the program and the first outside of Manhattan. Slocum first joined Grubb Properties in 1994 and spent five years onsite at a Grubb community in North Carolina before moving into managing multifamily operations and development. After leaving Grubb in 2013 to pursue other opportunities, she returned three years later as VP of residential operations, overseeing the multifamily division for two years before transitioning to managing director of development. As the environment for development became more challenging in 2023, Slocum led her team to find ways to add value to projects by securing entitlements and subsidies for existing development sites with an estimated value of more than $300 million. In addition, she is leading the company’s shift to add more emphasis to acquiring existing multifamily properties along with development. Slocum is responsible for all aspects of development, from acquisitions and entitlements through stabilization. She is also a member of the investment committee and the management team of Grubb Properties.
Megan Slocum
In the multifamily landscape, brimming with information and trends, CBRE vice chairman Nate Sittema navigates complex situations with a clear head, builds trust and fosters genuine connections. Leveraging 14 years of experience, Sittema meticulously researches and evaluates new concepts to ensure well-founded insights and actionable advice. His approach is characterized by discernment, an unwavering focus on people and a commitment to building strong relationships. Sittema leads the firm’s multifamily capital markets efforts in the Southeast, primarily deal structuring, connecting capital and thought leadership. He has led the execution of more than $6 billion in financings during the past three years. Two significant placements were a large $100 million refinance on a multifamily community on the peninsula in Charleston called Morrison Yard executed with cutting-edge capital well in advance of property stabilization. The other was a $200 million ground-up construction financing, placed in the past six months while the markets have been disrupted, that involved a senior and mezzanine lender on a New York City development that incorporated workforce housing and transit improvements that will be instrumental to housing in the city. Sittema is involved as a board member for Apartment Life and with his alma mater, Clemson, serving as a board member of the Masters in Real Estate Development program. Beyond these board positions he is active in several nonprofit initiatives throughout his home city in Charlotte, NC.
Nate Sittema
Thirty-five years ago, Masoud Shojaee began a journey into real estate by developing single-family home communities. By 2008, he had developed a large portfolio of residential and commercial projects in dozens of South Florida cities. He then decided to pivot from mid-market single-family houses and townhomes to luxury homes and multifamily properties as demand began to grow. Since founding Shoma Group, Shojaee has built more than 65 developments for a total of $6 billion in completed transactions, spanning more than 10,000 residential units and more than one million square feet of retail and office space. He is CEO and chairman of the board of the company and is referred to as the “King of Doral” after playing a significant role in the city’s development. Shoma Group’s recent and current projects include Sanctuary Doral Apartments, a 226-unit building he sold for $102.5 million; Ten30 South Beach, a boutique low-rise condominium in Miami Beach; and three mixed-use developments with luxury apartments and retail, Shoma Bay in North Bay Village, Shoma One near Coral Gables and Shoma Village in Hialeah. The firm recently made its first foray into the hospitality and entertainment industry, launching a series of upscale food halls called Shoma Bazaar, which will anchor its multifamily developments. In addition to being a businessman, Shojaee is involved in the University of Miami’s School of Communication scholarship fund, World Vision and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Masoud Shojaee
With a goal of revolutionizing the design process and architectural environment around multifamily projects, Jason Shepard founded architecture firm Dwell Design Studio 15 years ago. Starting from humble beginnings, he has turned the firm into a powerhouse with seven offices across the country and a team of more than 200 individuals that he leads as CEO. One of his key responsibilities is the firm’s marketing and business development, where he establishes and nurtures relationships with clients, industry partners and stakeholders. He values collaboration and engages with developers to understand their design and financial requirements and travels the country to immerse himself in different multifamily and mixed-use markets to stay ahead of industry trends. He is skilled at helping teams integrate emerging ideas from different sectors, including hospitality, senior housing and student housing into multifamily designs, and he is a sought-after thought leader and conference speaker. In addition to strategic oversight, Shepard sets the vision for the company’s creative direction, including establishing architectural approaches, design principles and sustainability goals. The firm established three new offices in Dallas, Charlotte and Richmond in the past three years, strengthening the firm’s national presence and allowing for greater accessibility to clients and opportunities. In recognition of the firm’s outstanding performance, Dwell Design Studio was honored by the Georgia chapter of the American Institute of Architects with the Architectural Firm of the Year Award in 2023.
Jason R. Shepard
Jim Schoonmaker has been a visionary in leveraging technology for the built world, including leading the company that pioneered the first street view experience in 2006. He also co-founded one of the world’s first virtual reality companies in 1997 and most recently co-founded Infinityy, an AI-powered smart assistant platform built to aid real estate decisions. The genesis of the Infinityy collaboration platform came about when Schoonmaker was long-distance apartment hunting with his daughters in 2019. He found that choosing apartments remotely was disorganized with too many links, videos and 4D tours. Using existing content, such as 3D tours and multimedia, the platform allows users to easily connect, tour and share properties together in customized Infinityy Rooms, meeting prospective buyers wherever they are, whenever they want. Notable companies including Alliance Residential, BGO and Presidio Bay use Infinityy to enhance the prospective tenant experience and speed up their lead to lease. In addition to Infinityy, Schoonmaker’s previous experience includes his role as the CEO and founder of EveryScape, the first street view experience in 2006 as the first scalable way to experience places online. EveryScape went on to become the industry leader for companies such as Microsoft’s Bing, AT&T, Marriott and NASA. He joined Mok3 Inc. in 2005 after four years as president and CEO of Liquid Machines Inc. Prior to that, he was president and founder of NerveWire Ventures and founding CEO of InterSense Inc. Schoonmaker says his proudest recent accomplishment is having played a pivotal role in revolutionizing property leasing through AI.
Jim Schoonmaker
Castle Lanterra founder and CEO Elie Rieder has been one of the most active owners and investors in the multifamily sector throughout his career spanning more than two decades. Rieder has been directly involved in acquiring more than 20,000 multifamily units and has invested across the real estate spectrum including residential, office, hospitality, retail and parking. At CL, he focuses on value-add acquisitions, where property performance can be enhanced through multiple operational and capital improvements. He and his team have worked to create a sense of community at all CL properties through environmental and social initiatives. The two major objectives they strive to meet are providing tenants with a positive quality of life and creating communities that residents and neighbors can be proud of. He has also turned around underperforming properties, including overhauling management, reconfiguring underutilized space, reducing operational costs, enhancing property security, and repositioning assets within markets. In addition to his activities with CL, Rieder is an equity partner in a substantial number of units owned and managed by Fieldstone Properties, an active New Jersey investor, owner and operator of multifamily communities in the eastern U.S. Responding to the volatility in the capital markets and a slowdown in lending, Rieder launched CL Credit, a new debt platform focused on the origination and acquisition of mezzanine and preferred equity, with plans to deploy $500 million in equity. As part of a diversification strategy, CL launched several new divisions, including Castle Lanterra Active Adult, Castle Lanterra Commercial, Commercial Lanterra Multifamily and Castle Lanterra Opportunistic Investments. Rieder and his team have implemented charitable and philanthropic partnerships across its portfolio, including with the Salvation Army, the Humane Society, Friends of Palm Beach, Women Rising Inc. and local food banks.
Elie Rieder
Richard Rennell is a leader in affordable and workforce multifamily finance, with 15 of his 20 years in commercial real estate finance dedicated specifically to multifamily lending. Rennell is managing director of Regions Real Estate Capital Markets and is well versed in loan programs offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. During the past four years, he has closed 175 agency loans totaling nearly $500 million. He also is knowledgeable in CMBS, bridge, conventional and balance sheet lending. His focus on client relationships has earned him repeat business with nearly 150 clients throughout the past decade, and he is often called upon to share his expertise in the specialty finance area. Rennell is located in Chicago, but his team operates nationally and is driven to not only close a large volume of small balance loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also to complete a range of cross-platform lending activity spanning various loan products. Rennell is credited with playing a key role in the successful onboarding and merging of the Sabal Capital Partners small balance multifamily lending platform with the Regions Real Estate Capital Markets multifamily lending platform in December 2021. In 2022, Rennell led the closing of a significant Freddie Mac multifamily transaction for the Leisureville Mobile Home Park in Woodland, CA comprising 150 pads. The $4.6 million transaction required a heightened level of commitment and leadership through a complicated, collaborative process among the agency, the community’s board and its residents.
Richard J. Rennell Jr.
Since 1992, Cushman & Wakefield executive vice chair Marc Renard has been recognized as a top investment broker in California and the Western US region. He has been involved in many of the largest and most complex deals in the Western U.S. and has executed several notable global transactions, including the $302 million sale of the Oriental One building in Shanghai, China. As executive vice chair of Cushman & Wakefield’s Global Capital Markets Group, one of the nation’s most successful capital market groups, Renard and his team have closed more than 550 transactions with an aggregate value in excess of $40 billion. In the past three years, Renard and his team completed more than 40 capital markets transactions with a total deal value exceeding $3 billion, brokering some of the West Coast’s most prominent multifamily investment sales, including a 525-unit multifamily high-rise in Los Angeles, which was the largest multifamily investment sale in the city in the past 12 months at the time of closing. Other notable sales include the Vermont, consisting of two high-rise towers containing 464 apartment homes in Los Angeles for $235 million, which was one of the largest urban transactions in Los Angeles in 2022, and Eleven Fifty Clay, a 288-unit multifamily high-rise in Oakland for $145.5 million. Renard is a frequent guest speaker at industry events, has appeared as a leading industry expert on a variety of news shows, and is widely quoted in national press. In addition, his real estate transaction experience and expertise have been recognized with numerous awards including the Los Angeles Times’ Visionary in Real Estate. He serves on the executive committee of USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate, the policy advisory board of the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics at UC Berkeley, the advisory council of the NMHC, and the leadership council of ULI.
Marc Renard
Jay Remillard brings more than two decades of multifamily real estate and capital markets experience to his role as co-head of CP Capital US. During his youth, Remillard’s family owned and managed multifamily assets, and as a result, he has performed virtually every job in the multifamily space – from sweeping floors and preparing units for turnover to collecting rents and leading a major U.S. investment management firm. These diverse experiences have been instrumental in shaping his professional approach, giving him perspective on what makes a multifamily property successful and enabling him to empathize with and understand stakeholders across the industry, from investors and asset managers to on-site staff and residents. Remillard joined CP Capital as the director of asset management in 2018, quickly progressing to managing director in 2022 and, most recently, to co-head in early 2024. He has helped refine CP Capital’s business processes, from sourcing and executing deals to navigating industry partnerships and communicating with investors, helping eliminate risks. Remillard keeps a close eye on multifamily trends and market fundamentals and is responsible for various writing-related tasks across the firm, including researching and drafting white papers and marketing materials. He takes a proactive approach to guiding and mentoring members of the CP Capital team and participates in mentorship programs at Fordham University and ULI. He mentors 11 individuals at various ages and stages in their careers, meeting with them regularly to discuss career goals, providing actionable advice informed by his decades of experience, and creating a judgment-free space where mentees can speak openly.
Jay Remillard
Former professional basketball player and French-American immigrant Remy Raisner graduated from business school in 2008 and struggled to find work in the thick of the subprime mortgage crisis. As a result, he created a company from his university dorm, borrowing to purchase those same subprime mortgages that created the Great Financial Crisis at a discount. Working through banking, foreclosure and bankruptcy laws in conjunction with court-appointed receiverships, he turned around distressed real estate investments to create a portfolio of Brooklyn multifamily properties. Since then, he has become an innovator in the real estate industry, rehabilitating apartment buildings that had not been upgraded for decades and has helped shape multifamily living in Brooklyn. The company preserves historic architecture while bringing new retailers and businesses to local communities to foster job creation and revitalize neglected areas. From the ownership of a sole property, The Raisner Group has pioneered urban renewal in New York City and has grown into the leader of the Bushwick, Bed Stuy and Prospect Lefferts Gardens emerging neighborhoods, with a growing portfolio of more than 50 apartment buildings and 20 commercial spaces. As CEO of the firm, Raisner leads overall growth and management of the firm and is a regular speaker at industry conferences and universities. He is writing a series of articles about the future of urbanism for Forbes and serves as a mentor to Columbia Business School’s real estate program and for ULI. Raisner is a member of the real estate committee of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and is a foreign trade advisor to the government of France. He is also the founder of Snap Back New York, a private, senior-level real estate networking group.
Remy Raisner
Dan Price began his career with national multifamily real estate investment company Waterton following graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business with degrees in both real estate and finance. He began as an intern during the Great Recession and climbed the ranks more than six years to take on roles including analyst, senior analyst and eventually assistant VP. He covered markets across the country and was involved in the acquisition and asset management of more than 45 investments with a capitalization of more than $2.5 billion. In 2017, Price accepted a position as SVP at Waypoint Residential, where he built the firm’s Central region by acquiring 14 multifamily assets with a total capitalization of more than $350 million. He joined MLG in June 2020 to lead the firm’s Midwest multifamily acquisition efforts and played a pivotal role in making 2021 and 2022 back-to-back record-breaking years for the firm, exceeding $1 billion in acquisitions each year. During the pandemic, Price secured and closed six multifamily deals totaling more than $265 million. Today he is SVP at MLG Capital, where he leverages a strong work ethic and passion for real estate to lead and manage primarily multifamily and industrial acquisitions across the firm’s Midwest markets. He serves on MLG’s investment and operating committees, providing strategic guidance to the firm and is a senior leader of a team that analyzes 300 potential acquisitions each year and submits 150 offers annually. Price has been directly responsible for sourcing 17 multifamily and industrial assets worth more than $650 million.
Dan Price
During his career spanning four decades, Mike Ortlip has originated more than $8 billion in volume across various loan structures and asset classes, primarily multifamily. He has extensive experience providing innovative financing solutions, reflecting a deep understanding of the market and an ability to adapt to its evolving needs and business cycles. Ortlip is senior managing director of originations for NewPoint Real Estate Capital where he originates and structures loans through a variety of capital sources, including NewPoint’s Agency, FHA/HUD and proprietary lending solutions. In addition, Ortlip is leading the expansion of NewPoint’s mortgage banking capabilities and has built a robust network of relationships with third-party capital providers across insurance companies, pension funds, the CMBS market, banks, credit unions and debt funds to further his reach of financing options. He supports a national group of clients that includes individual owner-operators, regional investors, private equity funds, REITs and other institutions. Ortlip’s expertise in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA/HUD executions, combined with his relationships with life insurance companies, banks and nontraditional capital sources, enables him to offer tailored solutions that clear the full market. One of Ortlip’s major milestones in the past three years was making the move from Grandbridge Real Estate Capital and its predecessor companies, where he spent 25 years and led the Charlotte office, to NewPoint in the summer of 2023. Since making the move to NewPoint, Ortlip has closed nearly $300 million in multifamily transactions, a significant achievement given the higher rate environment and muted investment sales activity. His recent loan origination activity extends across refinancing and acquisition financing.
Mike Ortlip
Georgianna Oliver is a successful entrepreneur who builds technology companies that solve challenges in the multifamily industry. Her passion for overcoming roadblocks in the industry has resulted in a 20-year track record of building and launching businesses fueled by innovation. Oliver founded Tour24, a technology that offers self-guided tours for apartments in response to consumer preference for on-demand, self-service solutions. She started Tour24 by herself, and during the first year of the company’s existence managed everything from finance to HR to technology development. Today, the company has revenues of more than $10 million and more than 40 employees, and she has expanded to overseeing a veteran leadership team, managing Tour24’s fundraising and serving as the primary company spokesperson. Oliver’s other innovations include EverGreen Solutions and AptBudget, which both sold to RealPage Inc., and Package Concierge, which sold in 2017 to Gibraltar Industries Inc. Oliver, who was recognized as CEO of the Year by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, started her career on Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives before pivoting her career into the multifamily space as a government relations specialist for the National Affordable Housing Management Association. She then spent five years as president of Kansas City-based Metro Commercial Real Estate, where she developed deep expertise in technology after experiencing firsthand the inefficiencies that plague the property industry. Oliver is a member of the Multifamily Technology Entrepreneur Conference and NMHC advisory boards, and she is a founding board member of the National Leased Housing Association Education Fund.
Georgianna W. Oliver
With more than two decades of experience in product leadership within the software industry, including leadership roles at RingCentral and Salesforce, Will Moxley spearheads innovation and product development at real estate technology firm AppFolio. Since joining AppFolio in 2021, Moxley has helped establish it as a leader in the artificial intelligence space. Last year, under his leadership, the firm launched AppFolio Realm, an integrated suite of AI-powered solutions to help property managers streamline workflows, unlock insights and boost productivity. This includes Realm-X, the industry’s first embedded generative AI, providing intelligent, real-time assistance by combining the latest foundation models with industry-specific context. The newest Realm-X capabilities Moxley’s team has launched are a platform-wide co-pilot experience, a reimagined inbox for managing resident communications and a workflow automation engine using AI. Ahead of Realm’s launch, Moxley contributed to the development of a responsible AI framework to set product development guidelines that prioritize fairness, reliability, privacy and security, transparency and accountability. As SVP of product at AppFolio, Moxley leads AI product development and oversaw the launch of AppFolio’s partner marketplace, AppFolio Stack, which now boasts more than 50 integration partners, providing customers with a way to manage their entire business, including marketing, leasing, maintenance, consulting and advisory services. Moxley also led AppFolio’s introduction of new affordable and student housing offerings designed to address the needs of large property management operators with complex and diversified property portfolios. He is a respected thought leader in the multifamily real estate industry, contributing insights to various publications on topics like technology implementation in property management and how to create better resident experiences.
Will Moxley
Andrew Mest
Alpha Realty principal and founder Lev Mavashev led a team of five from the company’s launch in 2014 in the competitive New York City multifamily sales market to one of the most active brokerage firms in the market. Today, Alpha Realty has more than $4 billion in total sale transactions across more than 1,000 buildings in the city. Mavashev leads a team of 12 brokers and support staff in all aspects of the deal making process, from compiling extensive demographic and location information to in-depth financial analyses. He is an authority on tax and zoning laws, as well as complex regulations surrounding the multifamily market in New York City. He used these skills to facilitate the sale of buildings with expiring 421a tax abatements at 525 Union Ave, 97 Grand, and 96 Stueben in Brooklyn. Recently, Mavashev was tasked with selling a multifamily portfolio of rent-regulated units. Faced with a limited buyer pool, he was able to attract multiple investors and surpassed the seller’s timing and pricing expectations to close the deal. His work has earned him recognition as a top investment sales broker in the city. Mavashev has established himself as a thought leader, with his insights regularly reported by the media and industry publications. A proponent of teamwork, he mentors all of his associates and assists in sourcing market opportunities and navigating deals while championing an expanded networking program aimed at helping his team members build long-term client relationships. Mavashev is a member of the Community Housing Improvement Program, the trade association for owners of more than 400,000 rent-stabilized rental properties across New York City’s five boroughs, and the Small Property Owners of New York nonprofit organization of small property owners dedicated to providing and maintaining decent housing and advocating for sound policies that help the city and its residents prosper.
Lev Mavashev
Will Matthews is an award-winning broker who is responsible for procuring, executing and closing multifamily investment sale transactions throughout the U.S. for Colliers. He specializes in institutional and private capital multifamily sales and the placement of equity and debt capital. In 2020, he was appointed multifamily lead on the U.S. Capital Markets board of advisors, where he leads national platform calls and bridges resources and support for brokers across the country. During his 12-year CRE career, he has helped sell more than 65,000 apartment units, totaling $8 billion. Matthews is especially skilled at finding out-of-market buyers with discretionary capital. He recently sold Livano North Charleston, a 332-unit class A asset located in South Carolina, to a California-based investor. He has been a recipient of Colliers’ Everest Award each year since 2016. His passion for the field led him to join the NMHC political action committee, which supports the apartment industry’s legislative goals. This PAC educates Congress about multifamily housing issues and encourages political participation, pooling contributions from NMHC members to back industry-friendly candidates on a bipartisan basis. Matthews is also an active member of ULI, the Atlanta Apartment Association, and the Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors. Outside of work, he supports Miracle for Mom, a nonprofit organization focused on finding cures for rare brain diseases. He also serves on the University of Georgia Board of Visitors.
Will Mathews
Tyler Marshall believes establishing a trusted reputation is key to long-term success in commercial real estate, and he has maintained a positive attitude that has helped him complete deals even during challenging negotiations and transaction obstacles. Throughout his 11-year career, Marshall has been involved with more than $1 billion in transaction sales volume. As an associate VP and associate director at Matthews Real Estate Investment Services, Marshall specializes in multifamily investment sales throughout Texas and represents institutional and private investors in the acquisition and disposition of their real estate holdings. His proudest accomplishment was closing record transactions in one of the most challenging markets in history during the past two years. Marshall set the record for the largest apartment/student housing deal in West Campus near the University of Texas in 2023 and 2024. Beyond his role as an active agent, he helps oversee the growth of the company’s multifamily division in Texas through mentorship and business development. He has been a mentor for Mercy Street, a Dallas-based nonprofit, and he is an active member of the SMU alumni board. He is an Eagle Scout and remains involved in the Boy Scouts of America organization.
Tyler Marshall
Capitalizing on recent Arizona legislation that allows non-accredited investors to become shareholders in Phoenix-area apartment projects, Jamison Manwaring co-founded Neighborhood Ventures to democratize access to real estate investment. Neighborhood Ventures is the first REIT in Arizona that allows individual investors to participate in the multifamily real estate sector with as little as $1,000. The firm has purchased 13 properties and sold five of them, paying investors a 12% preferred annual return on their investments. As managing partner and CEO, Manwaring splits his responsibilities between identifying investable properties in Arizona and securing investors to fund projects. He is adept at targeting distressed multifamily properties that are undervalued and ripe for redevelopment, often acquiring these properties from owners unable to refinance their debt or from banks looking to foreclose. In the past three years, Manwaring’s most significant accomplishments include expanding Neighborhood Ventures’ investor base to more than 10,000 individuals and raising capital for 16 projects via the crowdfunding model. These projects, which typically attract more than 200 investors each, have raised $3.5 million from Arizona residents. Manwaring’s vision extends beyond financial returns. By targeting distressed properties and employing strong property management and skilled remodelers, Neighborhood Ventures significantly improves property value while revitalizing residential areas. This approach not only benefits investors but also aligns financial success with social impact.
Jamison Manwaring
Mark Mandala has elevated the multifamily investment portfolio at Brixton Capital, a real estate investment firm that owns and operates a portfolio exceeding $2 billion representing more than 3,000 multifamily units and more than six million square feet of retail investments. As director of acquisitions, Mandala has built out Brixton’s strategy by pursuing off-market, stabilized, value-add and new construction multifamily in the lease-up stage across major metro markets. He leverages his broad network and keen analytical skills to identify opportunities others overlook. Mandala began his career in Freddie Mac’s Irvine, CA office, where he supported origination of permanent financing for multifamily assets structured as commercial mortgage-backed securities. He later joined Eastdil Secured, a global real estate investment bank, where he focused on multifamily and office properties. With aspirations of deepening his investment evaluation expertise, Mandala focused on multifamily acquisitions at RedHill Realty Investors, a private equity investor and operator specializing in the multifamily sector, where he served as VP of the investments group. In this role, he led the firm’s multifamily acquisitions across Colorado, Texas and Utah. Brixton brought Mandala on in December 2021 to grow its multifamily portfolio. Since then, he has positioned Brixton to acquire top-tier workforce housing in some of the most dynamic multifamily markets in the country. Mandala has acquired or is under contract on more than $300 million of multifamily investments since joining Brixton Capital, bringing the company into two new markets of Arizona and Colorado. Last year, Mandala led the acquisition of Alta Warehouse District at a steep discount to replacement cost. Alta is a 300-unit, four-story community with units averaging 943 square feet located in Phoenix’s revitalized Warehouse District.
Mark Mandala
The Lynd Group CEO David Lynd leads the vertically integrated real estate company based in San Antonio, Texas, overseeing the company’s investment, development, construction and operations activities. The Lynd Group manages 20,000 units in 11 US states and employs more than 200 people, and Lynd Development has $1.8 billion of new multifamily projects recently delivered or under construction. He also is the CEO of Lynd Acquisition Group, which identifies, researches and acquires value-added multifamily assets throughout the US. This year, the company completed construction of a 261-unit luxury rental community in San Antonio called the Josephine. With an upscale design and amenity-rich lifestyle, the project offers studios through 3-bedroom units and penthouse suites. Last year, the Lynd Cos. secured a $126 million loan and started construction on a 401-unit luxury apartment community in suburban West Palm Beach called the Villas at Tuttle Royale. The residential community will be a prominent component of a large mixed-use project with a downtown area, high-end retail and restaurants. Lynd lives by the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt that “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” This quote exemplifies his approach to overcoming downcycles in the commercial real estate industry. He has been invited to speak at several trade events this year, including the IMN Florida Middle-Market Multifamily Forum, The Florida Multifamily Summit, and the Interface San Antonio Multifamily event in San Antonio. As the son of a Vietnam War veteran, Lynd supports American veterans through a partnership with the nonprofit Patriot Services Group to provide quality housing for poor and homeless war heroes. Lynd buys and manages apartment communities on behalf of the organization, which in turn identifies war vets who need a place to live.
A. David Lynd
Wilton Investment Management CEO Chris Luo oversees the firm’s investment strategy and leads business development initiatives focused on class A residential rental projects nationwide. She ensures projects meet stringent quality and performance standards and is responsible for managing the firm’s overall operations and ensuring each department operates efficiently and effectively, maintaining high standards in delivering quality products. She oversees the management of five properties with more than 2,000 units and has developed expertise in the New Jersey, Florida and Texas multifamily markets, which allows her to provide targeted advice and perspectives to market shareholders. Luo’s accomplishments at Wilton in the past three years include executing exit strategies for five properties totaling more than 1,400 units. These transactions include class A rental apartments and value-added class B apartments in Atlanta, East Rutherford, Matthews, Austin and Largo. In her leadership at the family-owned business, Luo prioritizes creating a supportive environment where employees can express themselves and grow professionally, aligning their needs with the company’s strategic goals to maximize ownership’s interests. She participates in high-profile industry events and dedicates time to mentoring young professionals through coffee meets, where she shares her experiences and offers practical guidance and support. Beyond her professional role, she dedicates herself to charitable and civic-minded initiatives, supporting causes aligned with community development and social impact, particularly in housing and education.
Chris Luo
Rachel Lubeck integrates the arts and community living into the multifamily space in her role as creative director at American Landmark Apartments. She co-founded the company’s Artists in Residence program in 2020, offering visual artists no-cost housing, a monthly teaching stipend and studio space for up to a year in exchange for conducting art classes and events for residents. This initiative not only provides artists with a stable environment to create but also brings cultural and educational value to the community. By engaging residents in creative activities, the program creates a sense of community with an interactive amenity as well as alleviating the stress and anxiety of many during the COVID-19 pandemic. The success of the pilot program at Midtown 24 in Plantation, FL highlighted the demand for the unique approach. Today, the AiR program is active in 10 communities across Texas, Florida, Arizona and South Carolina. In her role, Lubeck identifies and selects suitable artists, coordinates housing and studio arrangements, and executes art initiatives across multiple properties. Lubeck is involved in various business, charitable and civic-minded organizations. As an advocate for sustainable living, she engages in environmental initiatives that promote ecological awareness and conservation. Her work at Grow Art as a land steward reflects her commitment to integrating art and sustainability, influencing both the real estate sector and the broader community.
Rachel Lubeck
Since founding The Douglaston Cos. in 1979, Jeff Levine has spearheaded some of the most complex residential projects across New York City and has built a reputation as a thought leader in the real estate industry. Levine is the founding principal and chairman of the company, which consists of Douglaston Development, Levine Builders and Clinton Management. He has directed the new construction or rehabilitation of thousands of residential units, including both affordable and market-rate housing, student housing, hotels, senior living, healthcare facilities and millions of square feet of commercial retail, office and institutional spaces. He spent some of his childhood living in New York City Housing Authority’s Linden Houses in East New York, Brooklyn, and Levine and his team are now spearheading the renovation and preservation of 1,922 affordable housing units across the Linden Houses and Penn-Wortman Houses in partnership with the NYCHA under its Permanent Affordability Commitment Together program. The $534 million project will cover physical improvements that will not only enhance the quality of life for residents but create new employment and educational opportunities. Levine is recognized for transforming Brooklyn’s waterfront with award-winning developments, including the EDGE development stretching along the waterfront of North Williamsburg, which includes the 40-story multifamily towers Level and 1 North 4th Place, as well as the EDGE luxury condominiums and affordable housing totaling nearly 2,000 apartments. Among his many professional recognitions, Levine was honored this past year by Fordham University’s Real Estate Institute for his contributions to New York City’s real estate industry and his support for the future generation, and was granted REBNY’s Harry B. Helmsley Distinguished New Yorker Award, honoring his lifetime of exceptional accomplishment in the industry and contributions to New York’s civic welfare.
Jeffrey E. Levine
Garrett Lee is president of Jamison Properties, which specializes in multifamily development through ground-up construction and adaptive re-use conversions of office to rental. Under his leadership, Jamison has bought more than 5,000 apartment units in Los Angeles, including 150 affordable units, and manages an additional 2,000 units under construction. Seeing the growing need for housing in Los Angeles, in 2014 Lee and his siblings decided to convert one-third of the company’s existing office buildings into residential properties. While adaptive reuse has become an industry trend in recent years, Jamison was ahead of the curve. This outside-the-box thinking has helped Jamison become one of the largest apartment owners in Los Angeles. Jamison’s initial multifamily projects were focused in Koreatown, and those efforts have helped revitalize the area and transformed it into one of Southern California’s hottest markets. Success in Koreatown has led to the company’s involvement in multiple large-scale multifamily projects around the city, including a joint venture to build Circa LA, a two-million-square-foot development that includes two 35-story towers spanning 648 luxury residences in downtown Los Angeles across from the Staples Center and LA Live. During the pandemic, Jamison was able to continue moving forward with virtually every project in its pipeline thanks in large part to Lee, whose leadership had put Jamison in a financial position to not only weather the storm but to continue to grow as opportunities arose. Lee is a firm believer in team success and has worked to create a culture at Jamison where employees are not only treated well but know that they are valued and their ideas to improve the company are welcome. Since 2019, the Los Angeles Business Journal has included Lee as one of Los Angeles 500 Most Influential Business People.
Garrett Lee
As an asset manager with Tablerock Capital, Leah La Masney collaborates with state and local agencies across the nation to seek out ways to improve critical communities. This cooperative approach to multifamily investment unlocks value for investors and provides safe, quality housing for residents struggling to afford it nationwide. La Masney oversees 13 mostly low-income multifamily properties across the US representing 1,500 residential units and totaling $195 million worth of multifamily properties. Specializing in bond properties and affordable housing, she has become an expert in local housing laws. Inspired by her father’s career in television, La Masney attended Chapman University to study set design and worked on sets for feature films, shorts, commercials and music videos as a freelancer during the next four years. A role working for an interior designer in real estate sparked a new passion, and she gained experience in real estate working as an executive assistant for The Pastrana Group, a luxury residential real estate team with Pacific Sotheby’s International Realty. She further honed her skills as a brokerage executive administrator for The Trujillo Group, a multifamily investment sales team at Marcus & Millichap, where she tracked multifamily deals across San Diego County, completed broker opinion of values with financial underwriting and comparable market analysis reports. She also created proforma scenarios for investors on value add and development opportunities. As a member of the multifamily investment sales team, she managed more than $150 million in multifamily investment sales volume. During her time with Marcus & Millichap, she completed more than 440 BOVs and helped her team win the top number of proposals in the San Diego office. She points to CREW San Diego as playing a pivotal role in her career development and now pays it forward as a member of the local chapter’s marketing committee and design team.
Leah La Masney
Deborah La Franchi founded SDS Capital Group, an institutional fund manager and private lender focused on affordable housing, in 2001. With a goal of engaging the private sector in the battle against poverty, she has built STS into a firm with more than $1.9 billion assets under management. La Franchi believes a key element for continued success is having the right team in place to not only to grow SDS but also to keep the company’s culture in balance. She has worked to create an environment of meritocracy where people are rewarded for a job well done. As CEO, La Franchi leads the structuring of fund investment strategy, spearheads fundraising, oversees the senior managers of each fund and division, and participates on each fund’s investment committee. Each impact fund on SDS’s platform serves a different geography and employs a unique investment strategy, but they all generate positive impacts for low-income communities and people. Throughout the last 12 months, many of the impact funds that La Franchi and the SDS Capital team have created to help in the battle against homelessness have generated tangible results. The Emerging manager American South Fund Management, a joint venture between SDS Capital Group and Vintage Realty, closed on its American South Real Estate Fund II with $174 million in equity commitments. ASFM is an emerging fund manager that provides preferred equity and equity financing for sponsors of real estate projects in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in 10 Southern states. La Franchi was named one of the LA Times 2024 Visionaries in CRE Finance and the Los Angeles Business Journal named her one of its 2024 Women of Influence in Finance. La Franchi is the founder and board chair of Sustainable Communities Fund, a nonprofit that provides capital for small and micro loans to low-income and diverse entrepreneurs.
Deborah La Franchi
Erin Knight’s start in the finance industry came through a fortuitous misprint at a local job fair. A political science graduate from Florida State University, she applied for a banking job meant for business majors. She ultimately landed the job and rose the ranks of the financial sector, later becoming market president for Stonegate Bank in Miami and opening de novo offices throughout the region. Twenty-five years later, she is president of Monument Capital Management, a role she ascended to just prior to the pandemic. She showed her ability to manage and grow a large-scale investment company while ensuring its stability during an uncertain time. Having acquired properties across 12 states throughout the Sun Belt, Midwest and Northeast, Knight has steered the firm out of the pandemic and continued to deliver for its investment partners. Her responsibilities include leading investor relations, developing the firm’s community relations, and supervising the firm’s executive team to ensure and maintain efficiency. She also works closely with MCM’s investment and asset management divisions. Under her leadership, the firm has excelled at its mission of investing in real estate assets where it can add value and deliver risk-adjusted returns while safeguarding capital and mitigating downside risks. Her biggest accomplishment is the firm’s Resident Impact Program, which supports residents through access to education and other tools that provide them with information and resources along with opportunities to engage with each other. Recent sessions have focused on budgeting, planning and other financial tools, and the firm provides health and fitness options to help residents holistically. Focused on helping other women thrive as business leaders, Knight started Miami’s first Lean In Circle designed to empower Miami businesswomen to share insights and reach their career goals. The organization now has about 70 women attending monthly programs.
Erin D. Knight
Based in Atlanta, Scott Kirchhoff leads Trammell Crow Co.’s Atlanta multifamily team and serves as SVP of its residential subsidiary, High Street Residential. He has become an influencer and leader during the 10 years since he joined TCC. Having previously worked for Goldman Sachs, Kirchhoff’s background in structured finance gives him a unique perspective on real estate development. Prior to leading the Atlanta HSR team, a role he was promoted to in 2022, Kirchhoff was based in Dallas and helped grow the firm’s HSR multifamily practice in North Texas to more than 5,000 units developed, delivering above-market returns and setting multiple record sales prices. While in Dallas, he helped double the size of the development team and provided ongoing mentorship and management to younger team members. In Atlanta, he established HSR’s presence in the market as a major player in the multifamily sector. He understands all aspects of a transaction, including intricate financial structures. In his role, he is responsible for sourcing, shaping and executing multifamily developments throughout the Greater Atlanta region, including current developments The Grace at Science Square and Residences at Perimeter Summit. In 2024, he and his team delivered The Grace, a 280-unit multifamily project on the campus of Georgia Tech, and subsequently secured a deal for the future site of a 350-unit project in Brookhaven, Georgia, due to break ground later this year. Since joining TCC/HSR in 2014 in the Dallas office, Kirchhoff has been involved in more than 20 projects totaling more than 5,500 units and $1.9 billion in project costs, including in-process, under construction and completed developments. He has been an active member of the ULI and was selected to participate in its Center for Leadership program, from which he graduated in 2024.
Scott Kirchhoff
Marcia Kaufman, CEO of direct portfolio lender Bayport Funding, recently led the expansion of the firm’s activity in the New York metropolitan and South Florida regions. This included securing a $200 million senior credit facility from Webster Bank to bolster the firm’s financial resources as it expands. She also played an instrumental role in the launch of Loan Lender LLC, Bayport’s third-party origination platform designed to fuel the growth of brokers and private lenders. Loan Lender enables qualified partners to originate one- to four-family multifamily loans, including small fix-and-flip loans, while leveraging Bayport’s reputation and funding capabilities. Under Kaufman’s leadership, Bayport Funding has closed $250 million in loans during the past year, and she drives the company’s business operations and expands the firm’s growing presence across the Eastern Seaboard in key gateway cities. Kaufman is dedicated to educating investors in the multifamily sector on how alternative lenders are creating opportunities for investors to build their portfolios despite the economic downturn. By providing capital when many institutional lenders are wary, Kaufman and Bayport Funding are creating opportunities that move the industry forward, an important mission during a conservative capital environment. The trust she has earned from investors throughout the industry is evidenced by the depth and breadth of her industry and client relationships.
Marcia Kaufman
With nearly 20 years of experience in affordable and workforce housing, Andrew Kadish is recognized as a thought leader by his colleagues and business partners in the multifamily industry. He has been interviewed by multiple publications and was invited to the White House to share his knowledge about the housing affordability crisis. Kadish is CEO of CAPREIT, a fully integrated real estate company that owns or manages about 12,000 apartment units. He is known for pushing the envelope and seeking new opportunities for the firm, and under his strategic guidance, the company recently entered the single-family rental market when it acquired a 120-home build-to-rent development community in Greenville, SC. He also oversaw CAPREIT’s sale of a three-property, Nashville MSA LIHTC portfolio, which realized a profit of $45 million. In 2022, Kadish and the CAPREIT team launched a major push into multifamily ground-up development, with more than $500 million in planned new communities in the Southeast, and in 2021, he oversaw CAPREIT’s sale of a six-property Richmond, VA, MSA LIHTC portfolio to Nuveen Real Estate, generating a net profit of $100 million. Previously, under his leadership as president, CAPREIT pursued a highly aggressive acquisition strategy from 2015-2019, teaming with JV partners to purchase market-rate and affordable properties totaling nearly 8,000 apartments. Kadish joined CAPREIT — which was founded by his father — nearly 20 years ago and has served in a variety of roles at the company, including president. He became CEO last September. As an active investor and thought leader, he also enjoys advising start-ups and early-stage businesses within the real estate, technology and social well-being sectors. He is currently chairman of the board of ChefSuite, a full-service ghost kitchen operator that supports restaurateurs.
Andrew S. Kadish
Andrew Jenkins has a vision to make complex data accessible and actionable for everyone, regardless of their technical expertise. By democratizing data access, he has ensured that smaller investors and property managers have the same level of insight as larger, more established players. Under his direction as chief product officer, Markerr has developed data solutions that change the way stakeholders analyze and interpret multifamily market trends, integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance decision- making. Markerr Data Studio is a dynamic platform that aggregates and analyzes vast amounts of public and proprietary data to provide users with real-time, actionable insights. The AI Data Scientist feature leverages advanced algorithms to uncover deep insights from vast datasets, providing predictive analytics that are both powerful and intuitive. The platform’s five-year quantitative forecasts for rent and population trends offer a long-term perspective that enables strategic planning and investment decisions. RealRent Comps aggregates real-time rental comparables, democratizing access to critical rental data and fostering a more competitive and fair market environment. Jenkins is an inclusive leader who unites cross-functional teams and fosters a culture of innovation. His primary responsibilities include overseeing the creation and enhancement of data solutions tailored to the multifamily real estate market. Jenkins manages a multidisciplinary team of data scientists, engineers and analysts. In addition to his product-focused duties, Jenkins advocates for data transparency and inclusivity within the industry by challenging the traditional reliance on private data sources and promoting the integration of public data.
Andrew Jenkins
Whitson Huffman is co-CEO of Capital Square, a national real estate firm specializing in tax-advantaged real estate investments, including Delaware statutory trusts for Section 1031 exchanges, qualified opportunity zone funds for tax deferral and exclusion, and REITs. He has spearheaded notable growth and innovation since joining the executive team in 2018. Huffman has overseen more than $6 billion in real estate transactions and grown total assets under management by more than $5 billion. Huffman’s visionary leadership is evident in the establishment of a successful development division, which has initiated projects totaling more than 2,000 apartment units with a total cost in excess of $790 million. He has led Capital Square to launch nine qualified opportunity zones funds focused on multifamily development across the Southeast, positioning the company as a prominent developer of high-end, class A luxury properties. In 2022, Huffman was heavily involved in the launch of Capital Square’s private equity group, a new corporate division that focuses on build-for-rent homes and other nontraditional real estate investment opportunities. Huffman also helped initiate Capital Square Living, the firm’s dedicated property management company, in 2023. Under his guidance, Capital Square received the 2024 CoStar Impact Award for multifamily development of the year for The Otis, a 350-unit development in the Scotts Addition opportunity zone in Richmond, Virginia. Throughout his career, Huffman has also demonstrated a deep commitment to community betterment. Under his leadership, the 501(c)(3) organization Capital Square Cares has championed numerous impactful initiatives, including live events at the newly revitalized Scott’s Addition neighborhood and supporting the completion of the Children’s Tower at Virginia Commonwealth University Children’s Hospital.
Whitson Huffman
Scott Hoppa joined McShane Construction Co. in 1991 as an intern while studying at Marquette University and today he is EVP of operations at the firm. Hoppa manages the regional business leaders for the firm’s offices in Auburn, Chicago, Madison, Nashville and Phoenix, standardizes operational practices across all offices, and drives McShane’s operational goals. Throughout the past 33 years, he has proven himself a strong leader and influencer within the industry and at McShane, and he has developed expertise in a variety of multifamily product types, including market rate, affordable, senior and student housing. He has overseen the construction of more than 70 multifamily projects in 14 states totaling 16,600 units and $2.3 billion in value. In 2005, Hoppa opened McShane’s Southeast regional office in Auburn, Alabama, positioning McShane to serve the growing Sun Belt region. Since then, he has expanded the office to 60 employees with revenue in excess of $285 million. As a result of his leadership, McShane is now one of the most active multifamily general contractors in the southeastern U.S. Hoppa is known for the long-lasting relationships he builds with developers, architects and subcontractors. More than half of the multifamily developers he has worked with are repeat clients, one of which he has partnered with on 20 projects. Last year, Hoppa’s team completed the construction of Thrive Sweet Auburn, a mixed-use development in Atlanta that provides affordable housing and support services for low-income individuals and those experiencing homelessness. The building combines 117 affordable apartment units with 11,400 square feet of office space. The project achieved National Green Building Standard Bronze certification and was named Best in Atlanta Real Estate by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Currently, Hoppa’s team is underway with Ellison Eastside, a 262-unit multifamily community in Greenville, SC.
Scott Hoppa
AKAM VP Adam Hirsch is working toward an improved perception of multifamily property management that emphasizes the importance of a personal touch when it comes to client services. This tailored approach includes proactively meeting client needs and understanding that each property and owner has its own culture. Hirsch believes that as the multifamily sector continues to evolve, personalization will play a critical role in building management, operations and resident experience. In his role, Hirsch leads the multifamily commercial new development teams and overall operations for AKAM. He is responsible for overseeing the firm’s various portfolios and property managers as well as general business development. He encourages a positive team mentality and collaboration, emphasizing the importance of teamwork when it comes to delivering positive results to clients and residents. Under Hirsch’s leadership, the multifamily department has grown five times that of when he started and added new asset types including the company’s first new development rental property. Hirsch attends regional and industry conferences to connect with other multifamily and real estate professionals, share expertise and learn from peers. He also has been a webinar panelist discussing New York’s new Good Cause Eviction Law, its scope, exclusions and the impact on the management and operation of residential property, and has shared insights on the security issues that multifamily owners should be aware of including package theft and cybersecurity threats.
Adam Hirsch
Inspired by Warren Buffett’s notion of buying hundreds of thousands of homes if it were practical, Shawn Henry is working to build the single-family rental sector into a significant class for institutional investors. During his 30-year career, he has developed best practices that support the sector and has prioritized recruiting and advancing the careers of early SFR professionals. Henry established the SFR for US Capital Markets team at Colliers and leads it as managing director. He is implementing a robust corporate structure to enhance engagement with both internal and external clients, and his efforts include developing the team’s equity sales strategy, debt advisory services, and best-practice models for closing assistance and post-sale/financing support. One of Henry’s standout contributions is the creation of subdivisions designed specifically for renting, built on his belief that a mix of single-family homes, short-term rentals, and build-to-rent properties will shape this sector for years to come. Since joining Colliers at the beginning of 2021, Henry has sold or financed 1,850 homes. Many of these financings were completed while he managed a Freddie Mac seller/servicer participating in the SFR Pilot program. One of his significant recent assignments involved advising on the wind-down of a 1,700-home operator and designing, optimizing, and executing a sell-down strategy that included 600 individual sales and multiple portfolio sales. A pending deal in this assignment involves 60 houses in Dallas with a transaction amount of $10.5 million funded to the client, or $175,000 per home, using a deferred interest structure to finance out an existing Freddie Mac loan encumbering the portfolio. Before joining Colliers, Henry owned and operated Green Tree Asset Advisory, an SFR real estate advisory and consultancy.
Shawn Henry
Akerman LLP partner Marc Heller is a strong believer in the importance of providing workforce housing to a market segment that is both deserving and critical to the US economy. During a career spanning more than 40 years, Heller has developed experience advising clients on all aspects of acquisition, disposition and operation of multifamily properties, serving as outside and in-house counsel for several large national clients and helping launch one of the largest workforce housing operators more than 10 years ago. He has also advised clients on how to start their own multifamily platform or take an existing one to a higher level. Heller counsels his clients on transactional matters as well as business matters of multifamily real estate, including navigating investor issues and needs. Heller has represented longtime client TruAmerica Multifamily LLC, a company he helped launch, for more than 11 years on acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures, financings, recapitalizations and operational matters. Throughout the past three years, Heller has advised TruAmerica on acquisitions of multifamily properties totaling several billion dollars, while also advising the client on dispositions of multifamily properties totaling more than $825 million. In addition, he represented TruAmerica in connection with establishing a joint venture with one of the largest investment management companies in the world, in which the joint venture acquired a 66 property multifamily portfolio in Southern California for almost $1.5 billion. He has also guided and represented TruAmerica in the launch of its build for rent platform, including property acquisition and joint ventures.
Marc B. Heller
John Harrington’s commercial real estate career began in 2005 at Pergolis & Swartz Associates where he developed expertise in structuring complex financial transactions, including senior debt, bridge loans, construction finance, multilevel note participations and agency classes. During his career, he has arranged nearly $3 billion in financing. In 2011, Harrington co-founded HKS Real Estate Advisors with Ayush Kapahi and Jerry Swartz and today he is principal and founding partner structuring complex debt and equity capitalizations. His responsibilities extend to facilitating opportunistic investment sales and assisting lenders with strategic loan dispositions. He regularly handles challenging deals. A prime example is a $24.5 million construction loan he secured that was critical for completing the second phase of Brookview Commons, an apartment complex in downtown Danbury, Connecticut. His role in arranging the financing for a range of significant projects — such as flagged and boutique hotels, A note and B note financing for a school-to-multifamily conversion in East Harlem, and a multiphase shopping center development in Florida — underscores his versatility and deep understanding of the multifamily real estate market. Throughout the past three years, Harrington has arranged complex deals including a $46.5 million CMBS loan for a newly developed multifamily property in Paramus, NJ and a $35 million loan for the development of a mixed-use community in Portland, Connecticut.
John Harrington
Edd Hamzanlui drives substantial change in the housing market thanks to a unique blend of expertise and experience in real estate development, finance, private equity and architecture. Hamzanlui’s educational achievements – which include an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a master of science in construction management from Georgia Tech and a master of science in architecture from the University of Tehran – give him a foundation in both the theoretical and practical aspects of building and managing housing projects. He founded and is a principal at MassCan Capital LLC where he addresses housing affordability for middle-income earners who are often neglected in traditional housing programs. He leads several housing development projects across Massachusetts’ South Coast cities. His responsibilities encompass overseeing the predevelopment processes of more than 120 residential units, including strategic planning and design as well as securing subsidies and financing. Previously he was VP of affordable housing development at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which provided him with a deep understanding of the financial mechanisms that drive the housing market and the regulatory and economic challenges that impact housing affordability. He then took the helm of a family-office-backed housing development firm. Under his leadership, the firm has successfully managed a pipeline exceeding 400 units across Southeast New England. Hamzanlui contributes his expertise as a board member on two committees within ULI and remains an active participant in the affordable housing community in the Greater Boston Area.
Edd Hamzanlui
Chad Hagwood, a leading originator and pioneer in manufactured housing community lending, has closed more than $15 billion in commercial real estate transactions during his career. He has been a top producer for Lument and was key to the firm ranking as the No. two manufactured housing communities lender for Fannie Mae last year. Hagwood has long been an expert in this growing subsector and shares his insights by speaking at conferences and authoring articles. As senior managing director and southeast regional director at Lument, he closed more than $531 million across 30 transactions in 2023. One of his noteworthy deals involved helping StoneRiver quickly rate lock a $43.72 million loan for its acquisition of Concord Ridge amid rising rates. Prior to joining Lument’s predecessor, Hunt Real Estate Capital, Hagwood was SVP and southeast manager for Capital One Multifamily Finance responsible for managing the company’s Southeast production staff. Prior to Capital One’s acquisition of Beech Street in late 2013, he served as EVP of originations. Hagwood joined Beech Street at its inception to facilitate the growth of the direct origination network and was pivotal in Beech’s rise to one of the nation’s top leading agency lenders. Hagwood has been recognized by the Birmingham Business Journal as one of the 25 Most Innovative Leaders in the Banking and Finance Industry.
Chad Hagwood
Tyler Hague transformed Colliers’ Midwest Multifamily Advisory Group from a team of two into a multidisciplinary group managing production teams in 15 states. He championed a new way of doing business with a regional/ national business model that has broken down traditional brokerage silos to foster a collaborative environment that promotes real-time information sharing and client mobility. The team is a top-producing brokerage with sales of more than 18,500 apartment units valued at $4.35 billion since 2021 and more than $7 billion since 2016. Hague is consistently a top producer in Colliers’ Chicago office as well as nationwide. As an EVP, he specializes in the disposition of multifamily investment properties throughout Chicago and secondary Midwestern markets. Throughout his 12-year career in multifamily, Hague has personally facilitated the sale of more than $6 billion in potential acquisition or disposition properties, covering more than 35,000 apartment units and 12 million square feet in Chicago and the greater Midwest. A notable highlight of his career is the sale of Riverbend Apartments in Indianapolis, a 996-unit community, that achieved the highest price for an apartment sale in Indiana at the time. He backs up his expertise in green building technologies and implementation with a LEED AP designation in operations and maintenance. Hague is active in several professional organizations. At ULI, he holds leadership roles on the Chicago Advisory Board and Local District Product Council - Housing Flight. At NMHC, he is part of the emerging leaders group. He also is involved with the Chicagoland Apartment Association and the Real Estate Investment Association and is a member of the Forbes Real Estate Council.
Tyler Hague
CBRE vice chairman and managing director Asher Gunter co-leads a team in Arizona and the Southwest that has closed more than 1,100 transactions totalling more than $43 billion and 330,000 units. The team has consistently ranked among CBRE’s top-producing teams in the US and has achieved success with the country’s largest multifamily investors. Gunter’s extensive expertise combines with his team’s detailed understanding of underwriting, product knowledge, market dynamics, capital markets and deep investor relationships to provide consistent success for clients. His focus is on multifamily land guidance, development and joint venture equity solutions; build-to-rent communities; and comprehensive financial underwriting. As the managing director for the Southwest Region in the multifamily group, he provides senior leadership for multifamily teams in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Southern California. The past three years have been record-setting for the team as they have transacted $10.5 billion in total consideration in Arizona and the Southwest including the largest single transaction in Phoenix’s history with the $325 million sale of Vaseo. The team also set the price-per-unit record in 2022 with the sale of Sentral Old Town at $756,000 per unit, the top price-per-unit deal in Phoenix’s history. In 2023, the team was responsible for Arizona’s largest multifamily asset transaction – the $161.5 million sale of The District at Scottsdale, a 332-unit, class A community. The team set the top four sales in the market based on price per unit. This year, the team had the largest transaction of the year in Arizona, with the $161.4 million sale of the Carter in Scottsdale. Since starting his career at CBRE in 2005, Gunter has been recognized for his success within the company and by national organizations and local publications, including CoStar and NAIOP.
Asher Gunter
As chair of Polsinelli’s nationally recognized real estate division and real estate industry group, Eric Greenfield helps shape the multifamily real estate landscape through his client work, leadership and community involvement. Throughout the past few years, he has focused on strengthening the firm’s existing client relationships as well as broadening its client base, building the practice’s book of business and growing Polsinelli’s real estate presence. Under his leadership, the real estate division has seen substantial growth. Transactions have continued to grow with a 15% increase this year despite the market slowdown. Combining his diverse skill set with real-time real estate and private equity intelligence, Greenfield has closed transactions across 13 countries and all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Throughout his career, he has represented various developers, owners and investors in the acquisition and development of student housing and multifamily properties worth more than $40 billion. He and his team serve as the exclusive outside legal counsel for a vertically integrated investment management firm with more than $13 billion in invested capital. His team has advised the firm on more than 49 direct acquisitions totaling $1.8 billion in capitalization and 21,000 beds as well as 41 development properties totaling in $2 billion in capitalization and 18,800 beds. Greenfield also serves as the exclusive outside legal counsel for a rapidly expanding St. Louis-based integrated developer specializing in multifamily and student housing projects nationwide with a pipeline of projects valued at more than $1.8 billion. He has been a trusted legal partner to the client since its inception and has continued to provide legal representation in various multifamily and student housing development projects totaling more than 1,621 housing units in 2024.
Eric G. Greenfield
As CEO of real estate developer Fairstead, Jeffrey Goldberg leads and directs all investment and operational decision- making for the company. Under his leadership, Fairstead owns more than 170 communities totaling more than 25,000 units across the country, the vast majority of which are affordable. Fairstead is also responsible for managing 17,000 units, making it one of the top 50 affordable housing managers in the country. Goldberg has shepherded numerous large-scale transactions through to closing, including Fairstead’s acquisition of more than 8,000 affordable units across 10 states within a single transaction in 2022. Most recently, Goldberg led Fairstead’s partnership with the New York City Housing Authority on the Reid Park Rock property in Brooklyn, reaching a $635.6 million closing with its PACT partners to renovate the homes of nearly 3,500 residents. Fairstead is acting as co-developer, property manager and general contractor to bring much-needed improvements to the nearly 1,700 homes at Reid Park Rock. Goldberg is committed to public-private partnerships like PACT, which he believes are essential for the revitalization of public housing across the country. In addition, Goldberg drives Fairstead’s philanthropic participation. As a result of his commitment to lasting impact, Fairstead was selected as one of the recipients of the Freddie Mac Impact Sponsor Award for the past four years, recognizing the company’s dedication to sustainability, building community and enriching lives.
Jeffrey Goldberg
Elme Communities senior VP of IT and chief information officer Susan Gerock is focused on technology, including cybersecurity, data and analytics, artificial intelligence and data management. She plays a pivotal role in Elme’s approach to the multifamily sector, which is concentrated on middle income renters often constrained by higher interest rates and purchase prices. She brings more than 15 years of experience to her role, eight of which have been with Elme Communities. During her time at the company, she spearheaded WashREIT’s digital transformation to Elme Communities from 2021 to 2023 and the evolution from a REIT with diverse asset class holdings to one that is focused solely on the multifamily sector. This transformation included designing, building and implementing the company’s resident-focused technology strategy, company rebranding to Elme Communities, website redesign, operating model redesign, community on-boarding and human resource restructuring. She has also been on the cutting edge of introducing new technology capabilities to the company to support the creation of Elme Resident Services, which enabled the centralization of many traditional back office and front office community tasks. Gerock is a thought leader who is willing to share her knowledge and experience at industry events, including frequent participation on panel discussions, industry webinars and as a platform speaker. She also serves as an elected board member for OSCRE International, a nonprofit industry organization that supports development and implementation of real estate data standards. Gerock is a founder of the #RealTalk conference track that focuses on bringing true change to the real estate industry through the inclusion of a diverse group of individuals who encourage innovation across the real estate industry.
Susan L. Gerock
For the past 12 years, Seth Gellis, president of Community Preservation Partners, has been a respected and reassuring leader in the affordable housing construction and preservation space, working in a diverse set of real estate areas, ranging from the new construction of multifamily, mixed-use, and mixed-income apartment buildings to the preservation of existing multifamily and senior apartment communities. He was promoted to president of the mission-based organization in 2023 after serving as SVP of the firm, where he started the East Coast division in 2018 and helped CPP become a national developer. During his tenure, CPP has invested more than $3 billion to enhance and preserve the affordability of aging communities and provide quality homes for thousands of seniors, families and individuals. Gellis’ moral compass sets him apart from others in the multifamily space. He believes that housing is a basic human right and puts people first and works to ensure the company is always doing the right thing. He is described as a lifelong student in his profession, always seeking new avenues of improvement and looking to impact the communities he works with by transforming real estate opportunities into productive assets for the community. As president of CPP, Gellis is tasked with uniting various parties who may sometimes have conflicting points of view, whether they are community leaders, residents, developers or investors. The company’s success relies heavily on his ability to understand the intricate regulations in the world of affordable housing while also maintaining a creative mindset and being open to innovation in these complex transactions. As the face of CPP, Gellis is a frequent speaker at multifamily conferences and participates with several boards and organizations promoting the preservation and creation of housing opportunities.
Seth Gellis
Nadia Geller turned her passion for creating the perfect home into a multifaceted career spanning more than 20 years in interior design that led her to her current role as principal and managing director of Nadia Geller Designs. Her focus is on how interior design can transform the look and feel of commercial real estate spaces and making multifamily communities feel like home. Geller’s first corporate job was at ABC Carpet and Home in New York, a well-known player in the furniture industry. Geller was cast on TLC’s home improvement reality show While You Were Out, where she appeared in 29 episodes. The show taught Geller many skills, including the art of producing attractive and functional spaces on a budget, along with the importance of listening and learning from clients to address their vision and lifestyle. Geller launched her business in 2005, initially working out of her home on one or two projects. Now, Geller has an average roster of 20 projects spanning large ground-up multifamily, hospitality, student housing and residential projects. A notable project for Geller is The Parker, a mixed-use shopping and residential project in the Pico-Robertson community, filling a housing gap with significant economic activity. NGD was responsible for the residential interiors and she incorporated various color palates to capture the neighborhood’s diversity. Because The Parker is in one of Los Angeles’ highest employment areas, NGD developed spaces to promote work-life balance for residents. In addition to devoting time to mentor internally, Geller also supports her community. She volunteers regularly for local organizations and encourages her employees to do the same at Habitat for Humanity and the LA Conservation Corps.
Nadia Geller
During the past two years, Taryn Fielder has played an important role in Veris Residential’s transition to a pure-play multifamily REIT. Her efforts drove the consummation of the company’s sales of Harborside 1, two and 3, and she led the negotiation of Veris’ early redemption of Rockpoint’s preferred interest in Veris’ multifamily portfolio in a July 2023 transaction valued at $520 million, which substantially simplified the company’s structure and is projected to save $24 million of annual interest while paving the way for additional expense savings. She joined the firm in 2022 and serves as EVP and general counsel with responsibilities supporting all facets of Veris Residential’s business. She advises on both routine matters and strategic development, as well as unanticipated events and crisis situations. She also structures all corporate and real estate transactions, negotiates material contracts and provides business and legal advice with respect to contract disputes. Fielder works to drive sustainable investment in the multifamily industry. During her tenure, Veris added a sustainable living addendum to all leases to encourage energy efficiency, water efficiency, waste and recycling, indoor environmental wellness and cleaning product suggestions. Veris was named a Gold Green Lease Leader by the US Department of Energy for establishing clauses and operational procedures that advance utility-efficient and carbon-neutral buildings. Prior to joining Veris Residential, Fielder served as general counsel at WashREIT, where she helped lead its transformation to a pure-play multifamily business during the pandemic. She is passionate about fostering mentoring relationships and regularly works with women and young leaders in various companies and roles to provide mentorship, guidance and support.
Taryn Fielder
With more than two decades of experience and $1.8 billion in sales, Brock Emmetsberger is a leading Manhattan investment property sales agent for Matthews Real Estate Investment Services. As EVP, Emmetsberger leverages his extensive experience to sell and purchase multifamily portfolios and ground-up development sites and help clients navigate economic cycles and changes to the New York State regulatory landscape. Following the rezoning of 2005, which involved the transfer of air rights through various city programs, he has been involved in the sale of more multifamily development sites in West Chelsea than any broker in New York City. Emmetsberger and his fellow NYC agents DJ Johnston and Stephen Dadourian have listed more than $300 million of properties across 40 assets since joining Matthews in October 2023. His mission is to maximize pricing for clients through collectively pooling multifamily buyers from Matthews’ 25 offices across the U.S. to direct capital and buyer interest toward the New York City investment property marketplace. Brock also works in tandem with Matthews locations across the country to provide Manhattan real estate owners opportunities to diversify their holdings outside of the New York Metro market. The record-breaking sale of 500 West 14th Street was a landmark accomplishment for Emmetsberger in 2023 during a historically sharp increase in inflation and interest rates. The $22.5 million sale of a 6,735-square-foot hospitality property represented the highest price per-square-foot ever paid for a free-standing investment property in the Meatpacking District on both an existing and ZFA basis. Emmetsberger targeted buyers for repositioning the asset, which contributed to the success of the award-winning deal.
Brock Emmetsberger
Allan Edelson is one of only a few originators in the country who have directly originated more than $5 billion for both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He has more than $23.5 billion in loan volume during his career spanning 29 years with aggregate loan loss of less than one basis point per loan, earning him a track record as one of the top loan-generating originators in the nation. Edelson is a senior managing director at Walker & Dunlop based in Denver, where he is responsible for new loan origination nationwide. Throughout his career, Edelson has accomplished many firsts, including being the first individual to execute a DMBS loan and a variable rate loan on a senior housing transaction. He also pioneered the structuring of a non-crossed facility and designed many features found in today’s large structured deals. Edelson implemented the original float-to-fix-to-float structure and he restructured the first performing Freddie Mac loan from amortizing to interest only. In 2023, he and his team executed 28 loans for $1.25 billion encompassing several notable transactions, including Landmark in Los Angeles and Residence of Bishop Place in Honolulu, totaling $350 million. The Landmark is a noteworthy new construction high-rise apartment building, the first of its kind in more than five decades in the area. Meanwhile, Residence of Bishop Place in Honolulu exemplifies the adaptive reuse of an office building into multifamily housing. Both deals address their city’s housing shortage, particularly for workforce housing. Edelson mentors junior colleagues within the firm and dedicates substantial effort to charitable endeavors that benefit the broader community.
Allan Edelson
Described as a creative and outside-the-box thinker, Standard Communities senior managing director of Essential Housing Christopher Cruz is an influencer in the affordable housing sector. He started at Standard Communities as chief of staff and in 2021, he formed the Essential Housing team, which focuses on creating and preserving affordable and workforce housing communities nationwide. Cruz’s team serves as the bridge between private capital and public partnerships to create new and preserve at-risk affordable housing for communities across the country. He oversees all investment activities, asset management and construction functions, capital markets, capital raising initiatives, and investor reporting for his portfolio of properties. Since starting at Standard Communities, Cruz has led his team to complete more than $1.5 billion in multifamily transactions. He was instrumental in leveraging California’s public-private partnership structure, which was designed to create housing for households with incomes between 80% and 120% of the area median income, to convert nearly 1,500 market rate units to middle income units. This resulted in lower rents for essential workers, including firefighters, police, teachers, nurses and social workers, allowing them to live in the city they serve. Prior to joining Standard Communities, Cruz helped build TAH Properties, the real estate investment and development arm of Tenth Avenue Holdings, where he focused on developing transit-oriented multifamily housing in the New York City area. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Maryland.
Christopher Cruz
Immediately after law school, Hollie Croft took a litigation job but found she preferred working with clients to create business deals rather than fight about them. To pursue that endeavor, she joined Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, where after two decades she now is a partner at the firm. Initially, she was assigned to the real estate group’s affordable housing clients. Today, she leads the firm’s 54-member affordable housing team across seven offices and serves other leadership roles within the firm. Croft works on deals ranging from $8 million to more than $800 million, representing developers on federal, state and local tax credit programs to build affordable housing units. Residents include people with special needs, unhoused veterans, the elderly and families whose incomes have not matched the soaring costs of homes. Croft has guided clients through more than $2.3 billion in affordable housing transactions. Most of the transactions involve developers acquiring and preserving or rehabilitating apartments rented by residents who qualify for low-income housing. Among her notable projects, she served as lead counsel for the development consultant and the development team on the structuring, real estate development and financing of an 18-story tower in Miami containing 578 apartment units serving elderly low-income tenants. The deal layered many different financing sources while involving complex real estate structuring, including vertically subdividing the building and imposing a condominium regime on a portion. She also serves as a member of the board of directors of United Against Poverty Orlando and the Coalition of Attainable Housing Providers.
Hollie A. Croft
Colliers vice chair Cindy Cooke heads the Cooke Team, a national multifamily group that has completed more than $20 billion in sales. It is one of the largest multifamily teams at Colliers, surpassing $1 billion in sales in 2021 and $739 million in 2022. Cooke’s philosophy of diversification for clients, which grew out of her experience launching her team during the 2008 financial crisis, has been key to navigating fluctuating market cycles. She previously served as interim manager and designated broker for Colliers in Arizona, where she attended global conferences in Shanghai and conducted daily interactions with more than 150 Arizona brokers and staff. Her leadership helped position Arizona as one of the top Colliers markets worldwide. Throughout her tenure in the multifamily sector, Cooke has amassed extensive expertise in large portfolio sales, brokerage of conventional and affordable properties, new development, property assemblage, construction, and debt and equity placements. She and her team support a range of multifamily asset types, including luxury, core, value-add, high-rise, new development, student and workforce housing, and land. During the pandemic, Cooke’s team represented a REIT in the sale of an 11-property portfolio with 2,599 units across the Central and Southeast US. She worked remotely with sellers, employing creative problem-solving including organizing virtual tours for buyers and selecting those who were qualified and eager to invest. Her leadership was pivotal in the successful closing of the portfolio during the pandemic. Cooke has 40 years of industry experience and has served as a role model for many women during her career through mentorship and thought leadership.
Cindy Cooke
At a time when capital markets were all but frozen last year, Chad Colley lined up a $61 million construction loan and an equity partnership that enabled a new multifamily-led mixed-use development in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, to launch. The Vickery will redevelop a five-acre brownfield site into a destination consisting of 307 apartments, 14 townhomes, a standalone restaurant, green space and recreation. The project dovetails with Colley’s mission to bolster the supply of apartments in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Colley is a multifamily and mixed-use partner at Trademark Property Co., bringing 16 years of experience to his role. He joined Trademark in Spring 2021 to start and establish a new multifamily and mixed-use development platform. His day-to-day activities include leading ground-up mixed-use development efforts while leveraging Trademark’s team to focus on deal sourcing, site planning, underwriting, construction and other related activities. A well-rounded developer and licensed engineer, Colley has extensive experience in enhancing communities through strategic planning and execution of residential and mixed-use properties. He recently received unanimous rezoning approval for a second multifamily project with 400 units in Dallas and he is leading the charge on sourcing, financing, design and entitlements for a handful of other future developments that will be part of Trademark’s multifamily/mixed-use platform. Colley is also passionate about designing and building Trademark’s multifamily and mixed-use projects to be healthy, highly efficient and sustainable. Trademark is committed to LEED Bronze certification or higher for all of its multifamily developments. Colley serves on the advisory committee for NMHC and was selected as the youngest member to serve on the ULI – Multifamily Council – Platinum.
Chad A. Colley
Brendan Coleman’s two decades of multifamily experience forms a key element in the combined go-to-market structure for Walker & Dunlop’s lending and finance teams in the Washington D.C. region. In his role as senior managing director of multifamily finance, Coleman is responsible for new loan origination and specializes in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multifamily products. He excels in arranging multifamily loans through these agencies and other capital market sources, consistently delivering tailored financial solutions to top owners and operators in the sector. Since joining Walker & Dunlop’s multifamily and finance production group in 2007, Coleman has led his team to originate more than 850 transactions, amassing more than $22 billion dollars in financing volume. His leadership and successes earned him recognition as a top 10 Fannie Mae originator and top originator in specialty financing in the country in 2023. He was also recognized as the No. 1 overall Fannie Mae originator in the nation in 2020. One of his most notable achievements was originating the largest transaction in Walker & Dunlop history and the largest single transaction Fannie Mae Multifamily has ever closed. Coleman and his team funded $380 million to refinance 11 student housing properties on behalf of a joint venture led by The Scion Group LLC. The team structured a Fannie Mae credit facility that allowed the borrower to eliminate all floating rate exposure in its original credit facility while refinancing several maturing one-off loans. The transaction processing was expedited, effectively rate locked and closed in just 35 days. This financing was significant as Walker & Dunlop has now originated more than $3 billion in debt for The Scion Group. In addition to this landmark transaction, Coleman and his team have structured 15 Fannie Mae credit facilities, collectively exceeding $6 billion in value.
Brendan Coleman
JLL’s property management team, led by managing director Lela Cirjakovic, has developed a top reputation in the industry since expanding its mixed-use platform to a centralized, multifamily platform two years ago. She joined the firm in 2022 to lead the new JLL Multifamily Property Management group, bringing nearly three decades of experience in real estate asset management. Cirjakovic is known as a leader who will roll up her sleeves and dig into challenging and complex projects and is driven by her desire to help people. In her role, Cirjakovic works with national and regional leaders to focus on building and growing client relations across the multifamily platform. She has hired 13 professionals and together they have secured four active US assignments. Most notably, the team was selected by Agave Holdings LLC for property management of The Plaza Coral Gables, a seven-acre mixed-use development property, consisting of office, multifamily and retail elements located in Coral Gables, FL. Prior to JLL, Cirjakovic was EVP of operations at Waterton, where she oversaw a portfolio of multifamily properties and was responsible for the strategic direction of the management platform. She was a voting member of Waterton’s leadership and investment committees while managing operations, sales, marketing and technology. Prior to joining Waterton, she spent 12 years at CAMCO Inc., a Chicago multifamily property management company, where she served as a member of the senior executive committee and as regional property manager overseeing the company’s Midwest operations. Previously, she was a regional property manager for Midland Property Management where she was responsible for eight properties in four states. Cirjakovic’s career began at the Illinois Housing Development Authority as an asset manager.
Lela Cirjakovic
Jennifer Cassell is president of CAPREIT, a fully integrated real estate company that owns or manages 12,000 apartment units across the country. Cassell joined the company in the early 2000s and has served in a variety of roles throughout the years, which has earned her the respect of coworkers and outside stakeholders. She was promoted to president in 2023. Cassell helped lead the company in an aggressive acquisition strategy between 2015 and 2019, including teaming with joint-venture partners to purchase market-rate and affordable properties totaling 8,000 apartments. Two years later, she played an important role in selling a six-property LIHTC portfolio that generated net profit of $100 million. Shortly after that, Cassell and her team launched a major push into multifamily ground-up development, and in the past two years, she has played a significant role in CAPREIT’s entrance into the build-to-rent market when it closed a 120-home development community in Greenville, SC. As president of the firm, Cassell is responsible for day-to-day administration of all company matters and works to improve company operations and promote the professional development of CAPREIT employees, including developing the company’s ESG efforts as well as its CAPREIT Cares program, in which team members employ a variety of efforts to make a positive change in the communities where the company operates. Cassell holds a Juris Doctorate from the American University Washington College of Law, and she serves as a member of the Bar of Maryland, the American Bar Association and Chief, a private women’s business organization for senior executives.
Jennifer K. Cassell
Jonathan Canter has focused his 26-year career in law primarily in the area of real estate development and today is a partner and co-chair of the condominiums practice at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP. Canter is prominent in the New York market, working on high-profile developments, and has been described by Legal 500 US as “the lead on all things condo.” One of his projects is Hudson Yards, the massive mixed-use neighborhood that continues to grow on the far West Side of Manhattan. He also has worked on the iconic Deutsche Bank Center, the first mixed-use condominium development of its scale and interconnectivity in the nation. Such projects and deals are legally complex and challenging because of enormous land and construction costs and risks. As lead condominium counsel for the Hudson Yards development, Canter’s work has included creating a campus-wide ownership association and management structure to govern all the individual development parcels, including for the $3.3 billion of luxury condominium residences for sale and affordable rental apartments. He co-chairs the firm’s condominium practice and represents developers, lenders and investors in a range of real estate matters, with a particular focus on condominium, cooperative and shared-ownership projects, including the planning, development, structuring and implementation of sophisticated co-ownership, operation and management structures. In the past three years, Canter and his team have handled the sale of more than $4.1 billion in condominium contracts and closings, representing nearly 1,400 new units sold, across Kramer Levin’s portfolio of more than a dozen active projects. He also has guided clients in bringing to market more than $35 billion of luxury residential condominium and co-op offerings in New York City.
Jonathan H. Canter
Under the leadership of CEO Sean Burton, Cityview has more than 3,000 units under development and has invested in more than 130 projects. The vertically integrated real estate investment management and development firm also has more than 6,000 units under management and owns or manages more than 40 buildings. During his 21-year career at Cityview, Burton has forecasted trends and pivoted the firm’s investment strategy and business model to meet the challenges of the market starting with the 2008-2009 recession when he shifted the firm’s focus from for-sale housing to multifamily. In 2018, he led the launch of Cityview’s property management arm, Westhome, which solidified its vertical integration across all aspects of a project’s life cycle, a key differentiator that has led to the firm’s strategic growth and expansion into new markets across the Western US. In 2023, Burton was instrumental in closing Cityview’s seventh discretionary fund focusing on multifamily value-add and development opportunities in gateway markets. He also helped create several strategic initiatives to support Cityview’s rapid growth, including launching Cityview’s opportunity zone fund platform, which raised $300 million from more than 150 high-net-worth investors. Throughoutthe past year, as debt expirations approached in a volatile market, Cityview managed and executed new loan originations, refinancings and loan modifications totaling $500 million. Burton worked to expand joint venture and investor relationships to set the firm up for success and capitalize on market opportunities. He is co-chair of the Los Angeles Coalition, a bipartisan group of influential business leaders who are working in partnership with government leaders to address housing affordability and other economic issues.
Sean Burton
Trammell Crow Co. senior associate Mary Boehmler focuses on growing and managing the firm’s High Street Residential multifamily portfolio throughout the Midwest as well as its senior housing and adult-active property developments. The company says Boehmler’s role in managing the team’s multifamily projects during an uncertain environment has been a critical part of its overall success in the region. Boehmler and her team have delivered more than 780 multifamily and active-adult units to the Midwest since 2020 and an additional 368 multifamily units in process in Chicago. She is responsible for supporting new business development and acquisition opportunities, managing due diligence, and overseeing the leasing and management teams associated with projects. She also manages the marketing and branding strategies for projects during the development phase. Within the past year, Boehmler and her team launched leasing and successfully delivered the James, a 152-unit residential building in Kirkwood, Missouri. The property is the town’s first new, high-end multifamily asset delivered in the past two decades, filling a substantial void for in-demand, high-end housing in the market. Offering a mix of layouts and high-end amenities, the James welcomed its first residents in March and as of June, the property is 44% leased. In addition, Boehmler has been focused on the delivery of Flora Apartments, a 368-unit residential high rise nearing completion in Chicago. Part of TCC’s larger Fulton Park Campus, the 34-story building is adjacent to TCC’s Fulton Labs advanced sciences campus. Construction began on the tower in 2022 and the first resident move-ins are slated for October 2024. Boehmler is involved in the TCC Professional Women’s Network and is locally active in the CBRE Chicago Women’s Network Steering Committee.
Mary Boehmler
Taylor Avakian founded The Group CRE and has become a leading figure in the Los Angeles multifamily sector during his seven years in the CRE industry thanks to his ability to identify lucrative investment opportunities and navigate complex transactions. He has appraised more than 500 apartment buildings and has orchestrated deals totaling more than $200 million since 2018. He serves as first VP of the firm and is responsible for strategic decision-making, client engagement, market analysis and team culture. Avakian spearheads initiatives aimed at disrupting traditional brokerage practices through innovative technology, personalized client services and creative problem-solving tailored to the unique needs of apartment owners. Avakian leverages technology and creative storytelling in marketing to differentiate his listings in a competitive market, resulting in increased visibility and interest from potential investors. He has been invited to speak at universities and industry events to share his knowledge and experience. In addition to engaging in professional organizations, Avakian collaborates with government agencies and advocacy groups to tackle issues like housing affordability and sustainability. He models his commitment to continuous improvement after the likes of Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Warren Buffet, and he says he aspires to lead the No. 1 CRE brokerage team in the country by production volume. Beyond commercial real estate, his civic-minded activities aim to improve the broader community’s quality of life.
Taylor Avakian
Grace Hill senior director of communications and social media Stephanie Anderson launched a creative campaign last year that quadrupled her social reach on LinkedIn and Instagram. The campaign included creating an entire line of dolls with accessories for every multifamily position. Her fun play on social trends that included Taylor Swift, Taco Bell, Barbie and the Super Bowl have kept her social channels visible and relevant. Anderson’s responsibilities at Grace Hill include managing and elevating the company’s public relations, content creation and online presence. This includes directing a PR agency to ensure the company’s messaging and image are accurately and positively represented. She is tasked with managing more than a dozen company social media accounts, including day-to-day posting and engagement activities. She also directs content strategy, encompassing all written and digital content including articles, blogs, press releases and speaking engagements. A significant portion of her duties involves creating and executing company webinars, requiring her to select speakers, decide on topics that resonate with her target audience, and collaborate with the demand generation team to maximize attendance. A notable achievement in her role was the successful execution of the company’s first brand ambassador program, which she spearheaded from its conceptual phase to its launch. This initiative involved identifying and leveraging influential figures within the industry and customer base to advocate for the brand, enhancing its credibility and reach. She also launched the “Let’s Talk About It” campaign in partnership with the NAA and the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, an innovative video campaign that uses real-life stories to elevate the conversation around mental health.
Stephanie A. Anderson
Design by Chris Nicholls
Illustration: xy/Adobe Stock
INDIVIDUALS
PetScreening
Believing that multifamily and rental housing should become more pet inclusive, John Bradford founded PetScreening in 2017 to address onsite restrictions banning certain breeds, which he says are based on…
Origin Investments
David Scherer and Michael Episcope founded Origin Investments in 2007 as a private multifamily real estate manager that builds, buys and finances multifamily real estate projects in fast-growing US…
NexMetro Communities LLC
NexMetro Communities LLC was ahead of the build-to-rent neighborhood trend when it began creating housing solutions for lifestyle-conscious consumers who would rather lease than own a home. It is among the…
Monday Properties
With roots dating back to the 1950s through predecessor firm Westfield Realty, Monday Properties is a well-known owner, operator and developer of office assets that ramped up its multifamily strategy in 2016.…
Hudson Valley Property Group LLC
Hudson Valley Property Group LLC’s focus is on saving homes that are at risk of losing their affordability status and its mission is to preserve and improve existing US affordable housing by acquiring multifamily…
Ecosystem
Ecosystem, led by founder André Rochette, is an integrated engineering and construction firm specializing in the modernization of energy infrastructure. Founded three decades ago, the company is active across North…
Ariel Property Advisors
Ariel Property Advisors was founded in 2011 and is led by founder and president Shimon Shkury with founding partners Victor Sozio, Michael Tortorici and Ivan Petrovic. The CRE services and advisory company located…
American Real Estate Partners (AREP)
Founded in 2003, American Real Estate Partners is an institutional fund manager and operating partner specializing in repositioning and developing data centers and residential, industrial and office…
Organizations
Topaz Capital
Topaz Capital Group was founded in 2017 by industry veterans with extensive experience in real estate investment and management and is led by CEO and managing partner Marc Hershberg. The firm focuses on…
The Connor Group
The Connor Group, based in Dayton, Ohio, is a luxury apartment owner and operator founded in 1992 that maintains a portfolio of more than 15,000 units across 18 markets and has grown to more than…
Stoneweg US
CEO Patrick Richard launched Stoneweg US, a landlord, investor, and asset manager, hoping to transform workforce housing into a model of sustainability while enhancing asset performance. Founded in 2016, the…
RET Ventures
RET Ventures was founded in 2017 with a focus on driving innovation and improving technology in the multifamily and single-family rental sectors. RET’s strategic investors, including some of the largest…
Property Markets Group (PMG)
Property Markets Group has more than 30 years of development experience in the multifamily space and is known for making bold improvements to traditional multifamily design and management models. The…
Newmark’s Multifamily Capital Markets Central Texas Team
The Newmark Multifamily Capital Markets Central Texas team is accustomed to doing more than 40 transactions and $2 billion of annual sales covering markets from…
Newmark’s Houston Multifamily Capital Markets Team
The primary role of Newmark’s Houston Multifamily Capital Markets team is to provide disposition and origination of debt and equity for their multifamily…
JLL’s Single Family Rental (SFR) Team
JLL was among the first institutional brokerage firms to have a team dedicated to the single family rental and build-to-rent sector. The team was formally established in 2021 but transaction activity in the…
David-Gebing Team of Institutional Property Advisors, a division of Marcus & Millichap
Long-term childhood friends turned business partners Steve Gebing and Cliff David are both executive managing directors for…
Horvath & Tremblay’s Dennis Kelleher & John Pentore
EVPs Dennis Kelleher and John Pentore lead the multifamily team at Horvath & Tremblay, establishing themselves as market leaders in multifamily sales within the private…
Greystone Lending
As co-presidents of Greystone’s comprehensive lending platform, Debby Jenkins and Mordecai Rosenberg work across Greystone’s Agency debt, HUD-insured lending, CMBS, equity, structured…
Funnel AI + Automation Team
The Funnel AI and automation team is responsible for bringing artificial intelligence innovation into the multifamily space. Founded in 2018, the team built renter management software that delivers a…
Franklin Street South Florida Multifamily Investment Sales Team
Franklin Street’s South Florida team provides a comprehensive service experience to multifamily clients, including integrating the expertise of the firm’s capital and…
Cushman & Wakefield’s Northeast Multifamily Advisory Group
Vice chair Niko Nicolaou and managing director Ryan Dowd co-head the Northeast Multifamily Advisory Group at Cushman & Wakefield. Nicolaou joined the firm in…
Cushman & Wakefield’s D.C. Metro Multifamily Team
The Cushman & Wakefield D.C. Metro multifamily team, made up of Jorge Rosa, Anthony Liberto and Alex Basile, brings investment sales and financing/debt…
Colliers Multifamily Capital Markets – Florida
The Florida multifamily capital markets team at Colliers has closed more than 187 transactions valued at more than $1.4 billion since 2018. As a team leader for…
Capital One Commercial Real Estate/Community Finance
Capital One plays a key role in financing multifamily properties and portfolios, originating balance sheet construction debt, tax exempt bond purchases, LIHTC…
Berkadia Affordable Housing
Since David Leopold joined Berkadia in 2019 to lead its affordable housing business, the platform has grown year over year and has consistently ranked as a top affordable housing lender. Under his…
Avanath Capital Management’s Acclaim at Baldwin Village Asset Management & Property Management Team
Launched in 2022, the Acclaim at Baldwin Village team at Avanath Capital Management has been an example of what is possible…
TEAMS
Believing that multifamily and rental housing should become more pet inclusive, John Bradford founded PetScreening in 2017 to address onsite restrictions banning certain breeds, which he says are based on faulty assumptions and drive potential renters away. PetScreening is a pet policy management software for the rental housing industry offered free to property owners and managers. The software allows operators to individually screen pets and their owners to accurately assess risk and reduce or eliminate blanket breed and weight restrictions. The platform weighs various pet-related factors – including a community’s specific restrictions, such as breed, weight and age – to produce a FIDO Score that reflects the risk posed by a pet. Non-pet owning residents also are required to fill out a free profile to confirm they are aware of the community pet rules. PetScreening allows operators to adjust rents to accommodate riskier pets and irresponsible pet owners in addition to allowing comprehensive tracking of onsite pet populations. Further, the product reviews reasonable accommodation requests for service animals and support animals, which often is a complex and time-consuming task for property managers. PetScreening now serves more than six million apartments and rental homes and estimates it has helped owners and operators capture more than $72 million in pet-related revenue that otherwise would have been lost. It has generated more than 3.5 million user profiles and completed one million assistance animal reviews. In 2021, the company closed a $3 million Series A funding round, which helped it grow its employee headcount by 75%, further the development of its educational and marketing content, and add functionality to its platform. To accommodate its growth, in 2023 the company moved into a new office featuring 25,000 square feet of modern, pet-friendly space in Mooresville, NC.
PetScreening
David Scherer and Michael Episcope founded Origin Investments in 2007 as a private multifamily real estate manager that builds, buys and finances multifamily real estate projects in fast-growing US markets primarily in the Southeast, Southwest and West. The firm helps high-net-worth investors, family offices and registered investment advisors grow and preserve wealth by providing tax-efficient real estate solutions through private funds. Origin prides itself on its ability to identify impending shifts in market conditions and dynamics and develop investment programs and strategies. For example, two years ago, in response to higher interest rates and its likely impact to net operating income, Origin devised and implemented a portfolio-wide strategy to leverage sophisticated and creative financial instruments more commonly used in other business sectors to protect investor capital and nearly $1.5 billion in debt liabilities. Through the purchase and exercise of interest rate caps, swaps and forward interest rate swaptions, Origin produced $48 million in tangible benefits for investors. Origin has launched three and closed two QOZ funds, raised more than $600 million in investor capital, and committed to ground-up communities with a construction value exceeding $1 billion. The company is based in Chicago but deploys a boots-on-the-ground approach by maintaining offices in a number of other markets for its 70 employees. It has raised more than $2 billion from more than 4,000 investors.
Origin Investments
NexMetro Communities LLC was ahead of the build-to-rent neighborhood trend when it began creating housing solutions for lifestyle-conscious consumers who would rather lease than own a home. It is among the largest developers of purpose-built rental home communities in the Sunbelt. The company’s class-A, multifamily Avilla Homes neighborhoods are located in submarkets of large, growing metropolitan areas. NexMetro developed its first neighborhood in Phoenix 12 years ago and now has more than 9,500 homes representing nearly 60 neighborhoods either completed, in lease-up or under construction. It has projects and division offices in the Dallas, Austin, Denver, Tampa and Atlanta markets and focuses on consumer research and data-driven decision making as pillars of its expansion. The success of NexMetro’s BTR housing model has influenced other builders across the nation to seek opportunities to develop built-to-rent multifamily projects. Today, the BTR business is one of the fastest-growing and best-performing asset classes in real estate. Founded in 2012, the firm is led by CEO Josh Hartmann, who promotes a culture based on learning, comradery, inclusivity and work-life balance. NexMetro was the first multifamily housing developer to pilot a program for the Arizona Housing Fund that allows residents to round up rent to support affordable housing. Another program it has championed is Entryway, which provides first month’s rent, job training and career opportunities to participants.
NexMetro Communities LLC
With roots dating back to the 1950s through predecessor firm Westfield Realty, Monday Properties is a well-known owner, operator and developer of office assets that ramped up its multifamily strategy in 2016. Monday has developments spanning the East Coast encompassing more than 6,500 units supported by an in-house team of multifamily experts. Its projects feature modern amenities and innovations and its strategy focuses on capitalizing on growth opportunities in primary and secondary cities that don’t have enough housing to meet population growth. Throughout the past three years, Monday has made a significant investment in Stamford, Connecticut, a location it was drawn to for several reasons, including the revitalization of the harbor and a significant population migration from New York City. The firm acquired existing assets and identified key capital improvement strategies to push rents and ensure retention. In Northern Virginia, where the firm has a significant office presence, Monday designed and developed a class A 300-unit multifamily project. The Blake contributes to the critical need for housing in a booming region that continues to attract global businesses and talent. Its amenities include a resort-style pool, a fitness facility with a nano-wall and yoga studio, pet spa, game room and expansive collaboration and co-working spaces. The firm, founded in 2002, is led by founder and managing partner Anthony Westreich and managing partner Timothy Helmig.
Monday Properties
Hudson Valley Property Group LLC’s focus is on saving homes that are at risk of losing their affordability status and its mission is to preserve and improve existing US affordable housing by acquiring multifamily properties and adding modern, sustainable enhancements. The firm aims to provide a better standard of living for residents and value for investors via enhancements and partnerships in the areas of healthcare, education and technology. These include free Wi-Fi for residents, securing Section eight rental subsidies for low-income residents who previously did not receive any rental assistance, enhanced security, and full property and unit renovations prioritizing resident quality of life and energy efficient improvements. The company is piloting a program with Esusu that automates credit building by reporting tenant monthly rent payments to credit bureaus to boost their personal credit scores. It also is introducing water quality enhancements and nutritious meal programs, particularly benefiting senior residents who may face mobility-related challenges. Further, by increasing programming and community-building activities like holiday meals, games and celebrations, the company strengthens the social ties that are essential for mental health within its communities. Founded in 2010, the firm is led by managing member and co-founder Jason Bordainick alongside member, co-founder and COO Andrew Cavaluzzi. Since its inception, the company has expanded its reach across multiple states with more than 15,000 units and growing. It has completed 40 transactions, preserving 75 buildings with $2.7 billion in project costs.
Hudson Valley Property Group LLC
Ecosystem, led by founder André Rochette, is an integrated engineering and construction firm specializing in the modernization of energy infrastructure. Founded three decades ago, the company is active across North America. The Ecosystem integrated engineering and construction approach is behind the success of the decarbonization retrofit at the International Tailoring Company Building (ITCoB) in New York City, an occupied multifamily building that modernized its energy infrastructure and achieved substantial sustainability goals, including long-term compliance with carbon reduction regulations. The ITCoB, a 180-unit co-op apartment building originally built in 1925, faced significant infrastructure and comfort issues until Ecosystem implemented a transformative project. Working closely with the co-op board president, Ecosystem navigated the building’s transition to comply with New York City’s stringent emissions regulations. By converting outdated systems to innovative technologies like air-to-water heat pumps and adiabatic dry coolers, Ecosystem achieved an 80% reduction in natural gas usage and enhanced resident comfort with new year-round in-apartment control of heating and cooling. In addition, the approach ensured minimal disruption to residents during active construction. The company also is engaged with ConEd with two of its three Utility Thermal Energy Network pilot projects, one focused on Rockefeller Center and neighboring buildings and the other in Chelsea, sharing waste heat generated by a data center with a NYCHA apartment complex. Headquartered in Quebec City, Ecosystem has offices in New York, Boston, Columbus, Los Angeles, Montreal and Toronto, from which the company is positioned to serve a diverse clientele. Ecosystem’s achievements have been honored with multiple awards, including two from The Association of Energy Engineers, one from the International District Energy Association, and the Clean50 award.
Ecosystem
Ariel Property Advisors was founded in 2011 and is led by founder and president Shimon Shkury with founding partners Victor Sozio, Michael Tortorici and Ivan Petrovic. The CRE services and advisory company located in New York City includes three separate but collaborative groups for investment sales, capital services and research. During the past three years, the firm’s investment sales group has sold commercial properties valued at $2 billion, of which more than $1.5 billion in assets were in the multifamily sector. The firm understands city, state and federal regulatory agreements, including rent stabilization, Section eight vouchers, HUD agreements and LIHTC. Ariel represented 47% of New York City’s affordable sales volume last year. The firm’s capital services brokers work on an exclusive basis and run a process on each assignment for all assets across the country including multifamily properties and affordable housing assets, tapping into their nationwide network of lenders to ensure that they match each property with the right financial institution. Ariel’s research group produces 28 research reports monthly, quarterly and annually on the multifamily market and semi-annual reports highlighting all assets including multifamily sold in Manhattan, Northern Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The group also creates more than 500 on-demand reports for clients and the media. Ariel recently announced a strategic partnership with Global Real Estate Advisors, a nationwide network of independent real estate investment services companies specializing in the multifamily market, to incorporate Ariel’s Capital Services Group into the GREA platform to provide mortgage and equity placement for clients throughout the U.S.
Ariel Property Advisors
Founded in 2003, American Real Estate Partners is an institutional fund manager and operating partner specializing in repositioning and developing data centers and residential, industrial and office assets in key markets across the country. It has deployed more than $7 billion to acquire more than 25 million square feet of class A real estate for development and repositioning and oversees a portfolio of 12 million square feet. Recently, AREP launched a new multifamily housing brand called CityHouse, which is a series of luxury home communities in key markets targeted at people moving out of cities into more suburban areas in the wake of the pandemic. One of the brand’s first acquisitions was Ashburn Station under a build-to-rent deal in Loudoun County, Virginia. Each home in CityHouse Ashburn Station has a private garage and oversized windows that welcome natural light to create a warm and inviting atmosphere. Interior amenities range from full-size side-by-side washer dryers, and seamless connectivity, to smart home functionality, including Nest thermostats, Ring doorbell cameras and keypad entrances for an optimal living experience. The surrounding area includes a fully integrated trail system connecting to several nearby Ashburn lakes and ponds. CityHouse Ashburn Station is achieving a 40% lead-to-show conversion, surpassing the industry lease-up benchmark of 25% to 29%. AREP also has begun construction on CityHouse Old Town, a luxury office-to-apartment conversion in the heart of Old Town, Alexandria.
American Real Estate Partners (AREP)
Topaz Capital Group was founded in 2017 by industry veterans with extensive experience in real estate investment and management and is led by CEO and managing partner Marc Hershberg. The firm focuses on acquiring and revitalizing multifamily properties in emerging markets through investments designed to improve neighborhoods and create affordable housing options. Topaz Capital has pioneered strategies that combine traditional acquisition and management techniques with modern data analytics and technology-driven solutions. By leveraging predictive analytics and market insights, Topaz Capital identifies undervalued properties and implements strategic improvements to maximize asset value. This proactive approach not only enhances investment returns but also sets a benchmark for industry best practices. Through rigorous asset management practices, including property optimization, expense management and tenant relations, Topaz ensures its investments remain resilient and profitable. As an alternative lender, Topaz Capital Group offers flexible terms, competitive rates and tailored financing solutions, enabling borrowers to access capital when traditional financing avenues may be limited or unavailable. Topaz Capital Group also prioritizes sustainability and social responsibility by incorporating green building practices and energy-efficient technologies and contributing to environmental conservation. Its commitment to community engagement and collaboration includes working closely with local stakeholders, nonprofit organizations and government agencies to identify opportunities for partnership and investment that promote economic development and social equity.
Topaz Capital
The Connor Group, based in Dayton, Ohio, is a luxury apartment owner and operator founded in 1992 that maintains a portfolio of more than 15,000 units across 18 markets and has grown to more than $5 billion in assets. Boasting a unique approach to real estate operations, investment, culture and innovation, The Connor Group has delivered a 30.4% annual internal rate of return after fees, and in the past five years, it has delivered a 37% IRR. A key element of the firm’s culture and a major differentiator is that it does not hire from within the real estate industry. Instead, the company recruits and hires candidates based on leadership traits including grit, pursuit of excellence, bias for action and accountability. It then invests in training to give them the skills they need in real estate and provides opportunities to earn an equity ownership stake in the company and its properties. The company promoted its first groundskeeper to partner in 2015 and currently has more than 60 partners across the organization with plans to grow to more than 100 within the next decade. The company’s transactional business model is to buy underperforming luxury apartment communities, improve the physical facilities, decrease expenses, implement other income drivers and improve customer service in a compressed period. Following a purchase, its operational team re-engineers luxury apartment communities in as little as nine months. In 2023, the company closed $1 billion in transactional volume across 18 capital events including buying, selling, refinances or supplemental loans. The company acquired eight properties nationwide in 2023, growing its portfolio from 12,971 luxury units to more than 15,000 while expanding into Phoenix.
The Connor Group
CEO Patrick Richard launched Stoneweg US, a landlord, investor, and asset manager, hoping to transform workforce housing into a model of sustainability while enhancing asset performance. Founded in 2016, the firm leverages advanced technologies to improve efficiency and reduce operational costs. It provides detailed reporting to enhance transparency, track progress and ensure accountability for environmental impact. This includes a commitment to controlling utility costs for workforce housing tenants and a strategic focus on energy efficiency, community engagement and responsible investing. Stoneweg US has set ambitious targets of a 50% Greenhouse Gas reduction in 10 years and a 20% reduction in energy intensity. The company’s notable achievements include Lake Maggiore, a mixed-income project that features solar energy, EV charging and a community garden promoting food awareness and sourcing that provides opportunities for youth to explore agriculture and culinary endeavors. Another project is the Mosaic Pooler Development Site, a mixed-income community developed with sustainability initiatives to maximize efficiency and minimize carbon emissions. Beyond portfolio performance, the firm promotes and guides sustainable practices across the multifamily industry. Team members participate in conference panels nationwide, sharing insights and educating competitors on achieving sustainability. They also appear on real estate and investor-oriented podcasts to discuss sustainability in attainable housing.
Stoneweg US
RET Ventures was founded in 2017 with a focus on driving innovation and improving technology in the multifamily and single-family rental sectors. RET’s strategic investors, including some of the largest REITs and private multifamily owner-operators — who own three million rental units across 9,000 apartment communities and 137,000 square feet of properties in the U.S. and Canada — work with RET to address industrywide problems and discuss technologies that can solve them. The RET team assimilates this knowledge and uses it to not only identify which proptech companies are best positioned to solve these emerging pain points but also to pilot products and influence their ongoing development. Since 2020, RET Ventures has invested in more than 20 technology companies serving the multifamily, SFR and short-term rental spaces, many of which have become a crucial component in streamlining and centralizing internal operations, helping drive down costs while increasing operational efficiency. Since 2017, RET Ventures has raised $500 million in committed capital across multiple funds. After the success of its first fund, RET closed on its second industry-backed fund in 2021, with investments of $165 million. The company launched the RET Ventures ESG Fund in April 2022 with lead investors UDR Inc. and Essex Property Trust. The fund supports the growth and implementation of tech solutions that not only address ESG concerns but drive increased ROI and efficiency for real estate firms. The investment vehicle aims to broaden the real estate sector’s approach to ESG, using a more holistic focus that addresses sustainability as well as social issues such as housing affordability, building health and safety, and resident well-being.
RET Ventures
Property Markets Group has more than 30 years of development experience in the multifamily space and is known for making bold improvements to traditional multifamily design and management models. The firm launched its Society Living multifamily brand in 2019 offering traditional units with efficient layouts, rent-by-bedroom co-living options, and oversized amenities that host daily community events, such as co-working spaces, modern gyms and fitness studios, communal kitchens, craft food and beverage operations, smart package lockers, bike storage facilities, app-based keys and more. PMG has expanded Society Living nationally. In May 2020, PMG opened Society Las Olas in Downtown Fort Lauderdale, FL, the largest development with a co-living component in the U.S., which was fully leased in record time despite COVID-19. More than 8,500 units are planned nationally including additional developments in Atlanta, Brooklyn, Denver and Nashville. Founded in 1991 by Kevin Maloney, PMG has gone from a local real estate operator based in New York City to a national investment, development and asset management firm focused on large-scale multifamily and for-sale condominium product, as well as select high-performing commercial holdings. Today PMG is run by managing partners Ryan Shear and Dan Kaplan with a vertically integrated team and departments specializing in acquisitions and land use, design and architecture, construction management, capital markets, asset management, sales and marketing, as well as significant in-house legal and accounting capabilities. PMG’s current multibillion dollar nationwide portfolio includes assets across pre-development, construction, lease-up, and sell out, totaling more than 8,500 residential units and more than 16 million square feet of development.
Property Markets Group (PMG)
The Newmark Multifamily Capital Markets Central Texas team is accustomed to doing more than 40 transactions and $2 billion of annual sales covering markets from Austin to San Antonio and those in between. The team is vertically integrated, allowing it to identify land sites that meet a client’s investment criteria, then provide the full capital stack of debt and equity, followed by the disposition post stabilization. Five investment sales, two land and two debt and structured finance experts make up the team. Team leaders Matt Greer and Patton Jones have maintained a close personal friendship that began in childhood, bringing trust and a heightened level of communication and collaboration not often found in most working relationships. Jones and his investment sales team are experts in local markets, which allows them to provide clients with up-to-the-minute information and data related to specific submarkets and locations within the Central Texas territory. Greer works with clients across the country, collaborating with Newmark’s network of licensed investment sales professionals for local support. In addition, since joining Newmark in 2016, Greer’s Austin and San Antonio volume has increased significantly and while some growth can be attributed to the growth of those markets, much of the success is thanks to the partnership with Jones and his team. The pair have teamed up for nearly eight billion in transaction value since 2021, including the disposition and financing or recapitalizing of newly built multifamily, as well as older vintage value-add reposition opportunities. Significant transactions include Westlake Vistas, for which the team procured 10 offers resulting in a successful sale to a large real estate institution. Another was Hawthorne Riverside, for which the team handled the disposition and Fannie Mae acquisition financing for the off-market transaction.
Newmark’s Multifamily Capital Markets Central Texas Team
The primary role of Newmark’s Houston Multifamily Capital Markets team is to provide disposition and origination of debt and equity for their multifamily portfolios or properties. Throughout the past five years, the group has sold, financed and capitalized nearly 1,000 properties, totaling $35.5 billion in volume. The team has worked together for more than a decade and is the largest multifamily team in the region, with 11 full-time investment sales and capital markets producers, 10 transaction managers/analysts, three marketing specialists and four transaction coordinators. It works with owners, asset managers, acquisition/dispositions leads and lenders, advising on market trends and best practices that can help clients achieve their individual goals. Houston’s sales and finance teams are embedded in the same office, allowing financing to be brought into deals early and offering insights that allow clients to make informed decisions throughout the process. Throughout the past three years, the Newmark Houston Multifamily team has been entrusted with the disposition and capitalization of nearly 700 properties, totaling more than $26 billion in volume. This achievement has earned the team recognition from numerous publications, naming them among the top producing groups in Houston and one of the leading multifamily teams nationwide. For the past 11 years, the team has consistently ranked No. 1 in Houston for transaction volume and, during the past three years, has held the top national ranking.
Newmark’s Houston Multifamily Capital Markets Team
JLL was among the first institutional brokerage firms to have a team dedicated to the single family rental and build-to-rent sector. The team was formally established in 2021 but transaction activity in the space dates back to 2016. JLL’s SFR team has closed more than $3.1 billion in sales, financings and equity capitalizations in more than 100 transactions of rental home portfolios and BTR communities across the country. Many of these were with established multifamily operators and capital sources in their first SFR or BTR transaction. The team operates across the country, leveraging JLL’s national capital markets platform to advise clients on all capital transactions, including sales and raising of debt and equity supporting existing SFR and BTR clients and multifamily-focused investors looking to expand. Recent closed transactions include sales of scattered single family rental portfolios, raising of debt and equity for the development of purpose-built rental home communities, and sales of to-be-completed rental home communities. The team has also been instrumental in working with institutional investors to expand into for-sale home strategies, including lot development and vertical development capitalizations. JLL’s team has grown deal volume by more than 50% annually for the past four years despite capital markets headwinds. Notable transactions include the recapitalization of NexMetro’s Avilla portfolio, securing a $100 million joint venture partner for Second Avenue, and multiple $200 million debt raises.
JLL’s Single Family Rental (SFR) Team
Long-term childhood friends turned business partners Steve Gebing and Cliff David are both executive managing directors for Marcus & Millichap’s Institutional Property Advisors division. The David-Gebing team has transacted more than $18 billion in sales volume in total, including more than $1.2 billion in 2023 alone. Their unique team chemistry, complementary talents and drive to understand the complexities of their market have made them a leading multifamily investment advisor in Arizona. Since joining the firm more than 18 years ago, the pair has earned multiple awards, including Marcus & Millichap’s Circle of Excellence and Chairman’s Club awards for the past seven years and the firm’s highly competitive National Achievement and Sales Recognition Awards each year for more than a decade. A notable recent deal for the team is Skywater at Town Lake/Tempe, AZ. With a constant eye on the multifamily landscape, the pair engages clients on a daily basis to better understand their challenges. Gebing and David play an active role within their respective church communities, as well as support charitable and civic-minded organizations including Phoenix Rescue Mission, Joni & Friends, Arizona Families for Home Education, Treasure House, Harvest India, Orchard Africa, Open Arms and the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation.
David-Gebing Team of Institutional Property Advisors, a division of Marcus & Millichap
EVPs Dennis Kelleher and John Pentore lead the multifamily team at Horvath & Tremblay, establishing themselves as market leaders in multifamily sales within the private client sector in New England. The two stand out due to their work ethic, attention to detail, and relentless pursuit of delivering results to their clients. They foster long-term relationships and are dedicated to being the best source of information and expertise in the marketplace for private investors, developers, institutions and industry professionals. In addition to their own brokerage endeavors, Kelleher and Pentore have grown the multifamily team at Horvath & Tremblay and both have been dedicated mentors to junior brokers and help them navigate their careers in multifamily brokerage. The pair routinely collaborates with the net-leased retail branch of Horvath & Tremblay to offer clients a passive vehicle into which proceeds can be placed when trading their holdings. Their knowledge and understanding of both sectors are major factors in appropriately handling clients’ capital and affords them influence in both areas by blurring the lines that have traditionally kept investors pigeonholed into one type of asset. The team’s greatest recent accomplishments are their record transaction volumes during the past three years and the continued growth of their team, which has led to an even greater presence for Horvath & Tremblay in the Greater Boston area. The team’s results and growth were crucial in cementing Horvath & Tremblay as the No. 1 multifamily sales firm in the private client space in the New England market. Outside of commercial real estate, Kelleher and Pentore have raised money and allocated time to local, regional and national charities. They frequently organize volunteering events for the company, including building homes or Habitat for Humanity, helping at local food banks, and participating in the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress Buddy Walk.
Horvath & Tremblay’s Dennis Kelleher & John Pentore
As co-presidents of Greystone’s comprehensive lending platform, Debby Jenkins and Mordecai Rosenberg work across Greystone’s Agency debt, HUD-insured lending, CMBS, equity, structured finance, proprietary products, debt placement and advisory services and loan servicing offerings. Thanks to their efforts, Greystone ranks as the No. four overall GSE lender by volume and also ranked as the No. 1 multifamily and healthcare lender in volume for HUD-insured loans during its 2023 fiscal year. Jenkins joined Greystone in September 2023 as executive managing director responsible for growing Greystone’s mission-driven strategies, including its social impact and affordable housing platforms. She became co-president of lending in February 2024 and is responsible for Greystone’s CMBS and preferred equity platforms, commercial capital and capital advisors groups, special servicing and B-piece investment, and bridge products via Greystone’s partnership with Greystone Monticello. Prior to Greystone, she spent nearly 15 years at Freddie Mac, most recently as EVP and head of multifamily, followed by the CEO and Partner at C3. Rosenberg is responsible for agency and FHA lending, primary servicing, and G2, a multifamily lending innovation incubator he founded. Rosenberg has been a leader within Greystone for more than 20 years, most recently leading G2, and prior to this, he was a sales leader after starting out as an FHA originator. As the leader of G2, Rosenberg focuses on client retention, developing and leveraging sales analytics to drive business strategy, and launching process innovation. The G2 team focuses on reinventing the client and employee experience by leveraging technology to optimize processes. Jenkins and Rosenberg’s achievements include $13.3 billion in originations last year.
Greystone Lending
The Funnel AI and automation team is responsible for bringing artificial intelligence innovation into the multifamily space. Founded in 2018, the team built renter management software that delivers a streamlined, consistent and connected experience from first inquiry through renewal while saving operators money through the operational flexibility. The team works alongside property management companies to build products to meet the needs of the multifamily industry. For example, to address unstable staffing and labor markets, the solution frees employees from rote tasks and equips them to cater to prospects as individuals. Recent innovations include voice AI and generative AI-powered multifamily-specific solutions that simplify inquiries, leasing and renewals. The Funnel AI and automation team launched the first version of the virtual leasing agent in 2019 in partnership with Camden Property Trust and then used the first large data set of annotated renter emails and SMS messages to train the original Funnel model that powers the virtual leasing agent. In 2022, the team launched a process to continually train the model to understand new renter questions and intents. In 2023, the Funnel AI and automation team built and launched Voice VLA, which enabled the AI solution to talk on the phone with renters, which streamlined both written and spoken communication. In late 2023, the team developed both multifamily-specific guardrails to mitigate fair housing risk to clients, and earlier this year, the team built the generative virtual leasing agent, which sends messages and answers renters’ repeatable expected questions. Finally, the team built a generative copilot that takes much of the cognitive load off of leasing team agents, allowing them to approve messages and add a more personalized touch to provide top-tier service to renters and residents.
Funnel AI + Automation Team
Franklin Street’s South Florida team provides a comprehensive service experience to multifamily clients, including integrating the expertise of the firm’s capital and insurance teams, which results in seamless transactions and new business opportunities. The capital advisory experts provide a wide array of debt, equity and financing options and the insurance services team secures the best coverage and premiums for property owners. The team consists of Dan Dratch, Ryan Wold and Ethan Krauss on the investment sales side. Their primary focus is on serving private sector investors where they excel at both marketing properties for sale and identifying lucrative acquisition opportunities in a highly competitive market. Specializing in the value-add segment, the team facilitates transactions involving older class B and C properties, unlocking their potential through strategic capital improvements. They also work with newer class A properties located in booming submarkets, which promise long-term rent growth due to their prime locations. The team has expertise in properties within federal opportunity zones, attracting capital for improvements and renovations that enhance the market’s overall appeal. Dratch, serving as regional managing director of the South Florida office, has been named a Power Broker for two consecutive years. Frequently quoted as an expert on multifamily markets in local and trade publications, he has spearheaded the firm’s growth and expansion in South Florida through strategic recruiting and initiatives. Wold has achieved $115 million in sales volume and participated in more than 25 transactions involving class A, B and C multifamily assets in South Florida from 2019 to 2022. His promotion to director in 2023 highlights his production and leadership qualities. Krauss has made significant strides in his career during the past year and was promoted to senior associate. He boasts a portfolio with $29 million in transaction volume, having closed 12 deals covering more than 75,000 square feet within the past year.
Franklin Street South Florida Multifamily Investment Sales Team
Vice chair Niko Nicolaou and managing director Ryan Dowd co-head the Northeast Multifamily Advisory Group at Cushman & Wakefield. Nicolaou joined the firm in 2021 and has more than 15 years of experience representing a diverse range of property owners and investors. He has been involved in more than $5 billion in gross sales consisting of more than 175 deals and 18,500 units. Dowd joined the firm in 2012, helping to expand the multifamily vertical of one of the nation’s leading investment sales teams. During his tenure, his team has completed more than 700 transactions totaling $33 billion, with more than $5 billion in multifamily sales. Together they have built a robust institutional practice while overseeing the entire multifamily platform. They have executed more than $3.5 billion in multifamily transactions since 2021, including handling complex, high-stakes deals. Among their notable achievements is the $151 million sale of Mountain View Crossing in Wayne, NJ, one of the largest suburban multifamily trades in the New York Metro area in 2023. They also executed the $58 million sale of Harborside four in Jersey City, NJ, marking one of the largest suburban residential land trades in the NY Metro area in 2023, and the $294 million sale of the Norwalk Collection in Norwalk, Connecticut, representing one of the largest multifamily trades in Connecticut’s history. In addition to leading the institutional practice, the pair works collaboratively with local teams across the region, spearheading the advisory practice in various markets. They focus on day-to-day execution and expansion, developing and placing business across markets while managing high-level relationships throughout the region. The team is active in industry groups such as the NMHC and ULI and engage in philanthropic efforts with organizations like the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, March of Dimes and United Way.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Northeast Multifamily Advisory Group
The Cushman & Wakefield D.C. Metro multifamily team, made up of Jorge Rosa, Anthony Liberto and Alex Basile, brings investment sales and financing/debt expertise to clients. Though the team focuses on selling and providing financing for market-rate multifamily properties throughout Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia, it has unique experience working with affordable housing and increasing the presence of this property type in the D.C. metro. The team spent much of 2023 working with local governments throughout Maryland and Montgomery County in connection with a right of first refusal program that aims to increase affordable housing and allows a county to gain control of properties and sell them to trusted community partners to avoid displacement of residents. A notable affordable housing deal the team brokered was the sale of Park Vue Apartments in Alexandria to a partnership between nonprofit Housing Alexandria and Amazon Equity fund. Rent levels were set to meet the criteria for residents who earn 60% of area median income. Novel office space to residential space conversions have also become more popular in the multifamily space and as office market owners assess the future of their buildings. The team has been at the forefront of this trend. Most notably, in September 2023, it sold Hampton Plaza in Towson, MD, including a 300,000-square-foot office tower as well as 200 purpose-built apartments with a pool and fitness center, all located next to the Towsontown Mall. New ownership plans to convert the entire property to multifamily housing in the future. The team has 55 years of collective experience.
Cushman & Wakefield’s D.C. Metro Multifamily Team
The Florida multifamily capital markets team at Colliers has closed more than 187 transactions valued at more than $1.4 billion since 2018. As a team leader for Colliers specializing in Florida’s multifamily sector, EVP Casey Babb, manages top producers and support staff across four offices, focusing on seller representation of large apartment communities statewide. Known for its success in Florida’s multifamily sector, the team has been involved in several notable transactions, including representing the sellers of a $134 million class A property in Tampa, the largest conventional multifamily sale in Florida this year, and a $130 million two-property portfolio in Orlando and Clearwater. The team also negotiated a $126 million transaction in Jacksonville and a $70 million sale near Destin. It has achieved record pricing on several transactions, each exceeding $40 million. The team includes 10 Colliers experts in multifamily housing operating from offices in Tampa, Jacksonville, Orlando and Santa Rosa Beach. Each team member brings advanced education and training in finance and real estate. Top leaders of the team include SVPs Luis Baez and Shawn Rupp, associate VP Miles Tombrink and VP Mike Steiner. Senior associate Sebastian Harris and associate Bennett Harrell round out the team. An investor who restored Saint Petersburg’s historic Inezda Apartments thanked the team for its advice and support during the project, sharing that it “did a marvelous job of marketing that classic property and finding a highly qualified buyer.” Members of the team are involved in professional organizations such as NMHC, ULI, Tampa Bay Real Estate Investment Council, the Florida Apartment Association and the CCIM Institute.
Colliers Multifamily Capital Markets – Florida
Capital One plays a key role in financing multifamily properties and portfolios, originating balance sheet construction debt, tax exempt bond purchases, LIHTC equity investments, and bridge-to-agency and agency finance/FHA loans, among other products and financing types. Properties it finances span assets across the multifamily sector from conventional multifamily housing to income restricted affordable housing to student housing and seniors housing. In 2023, Capital One’s community finance team originated $2.3 billion in debt and LIHTC equity investments that financed more than 14,000 affordable housing units. Capital One was ranked as a top 10 multifamily lender based on the MBA’s Commercial Annual Origination Rankings for 2023, reporting more than $8.2 billion in multifamily originations and was a top 10 agency lender by volume. In addition, Freddie Mac recognized Capital One as a top 10 Optigo lender and named Capital One the Top Workforce Housing Preservation Lender for 2023. Capital One is helping advance workforce and affordable housing creation and preservation requiring multiple layers of financing to achieve long-term affordability. The team leverages both financing tools and deep relationships to support clients in building the right capital stack for different types of deal structures at any point along their acquisition, construction or refinancing journey. Capital One supported three hotel conversions to permanent supportive housing encompassing 260 units in Southern California through the state’s Project Homekey program, which provides an opportunity for developers to convert properties such as hotels, motels and other residential facilities to affordable housing. Capital One has been a longstanding partner with CREW Network to help support its mission of advancing women in the commercial real estate industry.
Capital One Commercial Real Estate/Community Finance
Since David Leopold joined Berkadia in 2019 to lead its affordable housing business, the platform has grown year over year and has consistently ranked as a top affordable housing lender. Under his guidance, the team has expanded its ESG initiatives, implemented tenant credit-building initiatives and improved access to capital for minority-owned and led development companies. Members of the Berkadia affordable housing team represent the company in various industry associations including the Freddie Mac Workforce & Affordable Housing Committee, Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition, ULI Affordable and Workforce Housing Council, and the Multifamily Impact Council. Berkadia’s integrated platform offers mortgage banking, investment sales, tax credit syndication and advisory services. In 2023, the team ranked as the top overall GSE and HUD affordable housing lender. Notable transactions in 2023 include an affordable housing community in Orlando to which Berkadia provided $118.5 million in financing, including a $73.5 million construction loan and $45 million in LIHTC equity on behalf of borrower Lincoln Avenue Communities. Berkadia also assisted Jonathan Rose Cos. in securing a rate-locked, $68.5 million affordable housing preservation loan. As part of the closing, Berkadia and Jonathan Rose were able to lock income and rent restrictions on all 331 units at 80% of the area’s median income. The terms also restrict annual rent increases to 3%. Both deals exemplify Berkadia’s commitment to partnership, community and increasing the supply of affordable housing across the country.
Berkadia Affordable Housing
Launched in 2022, the Acclaim at Baldwin Village team at Avanath Capital Management has been an example of what is possible in the affordable and workforce housing space even in one of the country’s most unaffordable markets. Acclaim at Baldwin Village is a 669-unit multifamily community in Los Angeles that was built seven decades ago. The community has been home to multiple generations who have recently found themselves priced out of the market due to potential conversion of the asset into higher-priced market-rate units. Avanath invested in the property in 2022 in partnership with the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles and Kaiser Permanente. The partnership gave Avanath access to the California Welfare Tax Exemption, whereby ad valorem real estate taxes are eliminated for properties that serve tenants at 80% of AMI or lower. Through the strategic structuring of this acquisition, 468 capital A affordable units were immediately created upon closing, and the affordability of the property will be preserved for 55 years. The team is completing a projected $40 million in renovations and has implemented social programs tailored to the needs of residents. In addition, the team has developed a strategic “Keep Baldwin Village Affordable” campaign with the goal of educating residents about how the property’s conversion to affordable housing not only benefits them personally but also the broader community as well as how income certifying benefits them, including through the reinvestment in social programming. The team is led by SVP Saul McDonald. More than 30% of the subcontractors renovating the community and all individuals filling the 13 on-site management roles are from the local area to help facilitate continued economic growth in the immediate community.
Avanath Capital Management’s Acclaim at Baldwin Village Asset Management & Property Management Team
ZRS Management
Since its inception in 2010, ZRS Management has grown almost entirely through referrals and recommendations from existing clients, highlighting the value it places on client relationships. ZRS has…
Western National Property Management
Operating as the real estate management arm of Western National Group, Western National Property Management Group applies an ownership mentality to every…
VeriFast
The VeriFast platform produces a score for rental applicants based on a more complete financial picture than has ever been available to the multifamily housing industry, including cash flow analysis, spending…
Universe Holdings
Universe Holdings is a privately held multifamily investment, ownership and management firm focused on value-add and off-market transactions founded by CEO Henry Manoucheri in 1994. During the…
Throughout two decades in the industry, Andrew Mest has built extensive knowledge of modular construction and has leveraged that experience to help Greystar revolutionize its approach to multifamily housing construction. After four years in the United Kingdom overseeing Greystar’s modular high-rise construction projects, Mest wanted to bring his expertise back to the U.S. Under his leadership, Greystar announced its modular construction business, Modern Living Solutions, in April 2023. The business is focused on addressing the chronic undersupply of housing by delivering design-conscious and cost-effective modular apartments while combining development, construction and modular manufacturing in a vertically integrated business. As managing director of development, construction, and modular manufacturing, Mest oversees MLS’ state-of-the-art modular manufacturing facility located in Knox, Pennsylvania. The facility can produce 1,200 apartments per year as part of Greystar’s vertically integrated approach to deliver attainable housing under the Ltd. by Greystar brand. In the MLS factory, production focuses on optimized efficiencies, streamlined processes, quality control, reduction of waste and speed to market, all of which allow projects to be delivered up to 50% faster than traditional construction with less external risk from weather, labor shortages and on-site safety concerns. While at Greystar, Mest has delivered more than 5,000 units in Europe and the U.S., using various forms of offsite construction including DfMA, prefabricated façade systems, bathroom pods and 3D volumetrics. He has been a major contributor to projects in the US, Europe, China and Australia, with more than 90,000 apartments delivered throughout his career.
Since its inception in 2010, ZRS Management has grown almost entirely through referrals and recommendations from existing clients, highlighting the value it places on client relationships. ZRS has become one of the most successful standalone third-party management companies in the country, managing more than 85,000 units across more than 300 properties in the Southeast and Texas. Throughout the past 12 months, the firm has added more than 9,000 units under management, creating opportunities to promote in-house team members and add new personnel to end 2022 with more than 1,600 employees. It also has maintained its position on the NMHC Top 20 property management companies list. Led by CEO Steve Buck and President Darren Pierce, ZRS has extensive experience managing garden-style apartments, urban mixed-use projects, fractured condominium projects and luxury high-rise buildings. ZRS considers each client a partner and works with them on strategic objectives. Rather than focus on expansion through new businesses, ZRS prides itself on helping existing clients expand and keeping its communities stable for the long term. For example, the firm is expanding into the centralized leasing agent space and is now centralizing its assistant managers across multiple properties to reduce payroll costs for clients. In addition, its in-house marketing service eliminates the need for outside advertising. ZRS is committed to investing significant time and resources in a wide variety of causes that make a long-term, measurable impact on peoples’ lives. The company invests in local communities and aims to provide a positive living environment by supporting the communities and properties surrounding its renters.
ZRS Management
Operating as the real estate management arm of Western National Group, Western National Property Management Group applies an ownership mentality to every asset it manages. Western National Property Management operates in California and Nevada and currently manages more than 23,000 multifamily units with a combined value of more than $8 billion, including assets WNG owns and those it doesn’t. WNPM’s management portfolio also encompasses 225,600 square feet of mixed-use properties. A Western National sister company has built more than 50,000 units for WNPM and other major California landowners. Consequently, the company approaches its management style from the perspective of an owner, not a management company. WNPM was founded in 1981 and is led by president Laura Khouri, who is described as an empathetic leader with a strong ability to operate high-performing properties that consistently drive owners toward their business goals. Khouri is responsible for overseeing property management for more than 165 apartment communities and a team of 750 associates. Among the firm’s most notable successes during the past three years is a three-year partnership with the Anaheim Ducks, through which team jerseys bear the WNPM logo at all home games and local WNPM communities are promoted in the arena during games. Another success was rent relief for residents experiencing difficult times. Baked into every Western National lease agreement is the firm’s Layoff Protection Program, originally implemented in 2007, which has continued to serve as a means to provide a no-fault termination option for residents impacted by employment loss, including throughout the pandemic.
Western National Property Management
The VeriFast platform produces a score for rental applicants based on a more complete financial picture than has ever been available to the multifamily housing industry, including cash flow analysis, spending patterns, income streams, rent payment history, overdrafts and monthly account balances. Founded last year, the company’s goal is to help property owners and managers unlock more income and improve their net operating income by evaluating data points outside of standard industry reports that verify applicants’ employment, salary and credit. These reports sometimes miss income that can make a renter a good risk, including gig economy and freelance work, government income, lump sum assets and support from family or inheritances. Further, standard reports can lead to delinquencies and evictions as some renters can’t afford to pay even if their income shows they should be able to. Client Panoramic Properties has used VeriFast to process 700 applications this year, improving its approval rate by 27% while seeing a drop in delinquencies. The product reduces administrative costs, improves tenant relations and streamlines the leasing process. VeriFast entered a partnership with mortgage underwriting platform FundMore in 2022 to integrate its income verification technology into FundMore’s offering to lenders. VeriFast has obtained System and Organization Controls two Type 1 status from the American Institute of CPAs. To earn this status, VeriFast underwent a comprehensive independent audit to ensure its compliance with standards and to assure both applicants and clients that it treats data with the highest level of confidentiality, security and availability. The firm is led by CEO Tim Ray.
VeriFast
Universe Holdings is a privately held multifamily investment, ownership and management firm focused on value-add and off-market transactions founded by CEO Henry Manoucheri in 1994. During the company’s first year, its assets under management tripled, which proved to be a sign of success to come. Today the company’s $2.5 billion portfolio has completed investment transactions of more than 7,500 apartment units throughout the U.S. and abroad. A major player in Southern California’s multifamily market, Universe has expanded its focus during the past 24 months by acquiring in Southern California markets from San Diego to Ventura and expanding its footprint to include the East Coast. In January, Universe made its first acquisition in Florida, acquiring Pearce at Pavilion, a 250-unit multifamily property in Tampa for $66 million. Universe has found success investing in niche properties, including the acquisition of historic Los Angeles art deco properties that are often neglected and restoring them to their original condition. Throughout the past three years, Universe has more than doubled the number of people it employs, driven in part by the company’s goal of creating a diversified staff that allows it to represent the communities in which it provides service. Universe aims to provide a positive living environment by supporting the communities and properties surrounding its renters.
Universe Holdings