Harrison Street Real Estate

Updated on Dec 24, 2023

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Type Private AUM US$12.2 billion (2017)		Industry Private Equity Founded 2005

Headquarters 444 W. Lake Street Chicago, Illinois 60606 United States Products Student Housing Senior Living Self Storage Medical Office Total assets 602 acquired or developed properties since inception, 218 sold properties since inception Founders Michael Galvin, Christopher Galvin, Christopher Merrill Subsidiaries Campus Crest Communities Inc, Harrison Street Securities, LLC, Harrison Street Advisors, LLC Profiles LinkedIn

Harrison Street Real Estate Capital is a private real estate investment management firm based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 2005 by Christopher Merrill, Chris Galvin, and Michael Galvin, the Firm focuses on real estate investments in the Education, Healthcare, and Storage sectors.

The Firm makes investments through private funds including closed-end opportunity funds, co-investment vehicles, and an open-end core fund. In addition, in December 2010, Harrison Street acquired a REIT Securities advisory firm, and launched Harrison Street Securities, which provides investors with actively managed commingled funds, separate accounts, and mutual fund products investing in public REIT Securities.

Over $7.1 billion in discretionary capital has been raised in-house for the Firm’s private funds. Investors are globally diversified and include public and corporate pension funds, endowments, foundations, insurance companies and family offices.

For the past three years the Firm has been named to the PERE 50 list, which ranks the 50 largest private equity real estate firms it the world. In December 2015, Forbes featured the Firm in a piece titled “Real Estate for the Ages,” which highlighted the Firm’s demographic driven investment thesis.

In both 2014 and 2015 the Firm was honored by being awarded Pension and Investments “Best Places to Work".

Strategic Approach

Harrison Street began building its real estate investment business in 2005 after tremendous thought regarding the overall strategy. In fact, the company even applied the Six Sigma methodology by using an FMEA (Failure Modes and Effect Analysis) in creating its go to market plan. This approach ensures the sectors ultimately selected for investment, here senior living, student housing, self-storage and medical office, would not be directly tied to the cyclicality of the macro-economy.

Today the Firm has assets under management of approximately $10.9 billion and since inception has acquired or developed approximately $13.9 B of real estate throughout 647 properties in 45 states including over 117,300 student beds, more than 18,700 senior housing units, over 6.7 million square feet of medical office space, and more than 105,000 self-storage units.

Key Milestones

In March 2016, Harrison Street Real Estate announced the completion of its acquisition of Campus Crest Communities, Inc. (NYSE:CCG), constituting the largest acquisition of student housing properties in the industry at over 76,000 beds on 85 campuses. The gross transaction of the deal was valued at approximately $1.9 B. Campus Crest's portfolio of high-quality student housing properties encompassed over 38,0000 beds across the United States prior to the deal.

In June 2015, Harrison Street opened a London office to focus upon investments in the European student housing market, beginning with a student housing development in Dublin, Ireland. The office was opened following a first closing for its European fund. The firm also announced at this time that it plans to co-invest €250 million in Dublin student accommodations with GSA Investment Management, a global student housing developer.

In May 2015, Harrison Street announced a partnership with the Elmspring, a seed-state accelerator for real estate technology start-ups. Along with initial capital, Harrison Street plays an advisory role to the Elmspring cohort companies.

Fund History

The following is a summary of Harrison Street's real estate opportunistic funds raised by year:

Culture

Like prominent companies before them, e.g. Motorola and GE, Harrison Street promotes the culture of the “4 e’s + Always 1” leadership standards in all of its business and personal endeavors:

envision: Identifies meaningful and innovative change that produces profitable growth. Comes up with the vision, strategies and viable long-term plan that will achieve it.

energize: Excites employees, customers, and partners around winning ideas. Brings high energy to the job personally and create an environment where everyone has passion to excel and the opportunity to contribute.

edge: Cuts to the essence; makes bold, timely decisions; insists that the organization outperform expectations; brings a healthy dissatisfaction with the way things are; makes tough calls when the business or individuals are not performing.

execute: Achieves results significantly better than competitors - by employing innovative, proven and rigorous management practices. Meets commitments and keeps promises.

+ Ethics: Conducts business ethically. Keeps one’s personal ambitions and emotional reactions from interfering, and treats all people and all cultures with respect and dignity.

Community Vitality

Harrison Street is committed to enhancing the well being, health, and vitality of our employees, tenants, and communities where we live and conduct business. The Firm has a charitable gift matching program and has held volunteer events in conjunction with the following groups:

G.D. Kanoon Magnet Elementary School (Partnered with Chicago Cares)

Habitat for Humanity

Lidia Pucinska Apartments (Partnered with Chicago Cares)

ReVive Center for Housing and Healing

Ronald McDonald House

References

Harrison Street Real Estate Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA