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Focus, discipline, and
value creation.

Menu Heitman Designs
Private Real Estate — Equity

Heitman actively manages separate account and commingled fund portfolios across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Our core, value-added, and opportunistic strategies stem from decades of experience, focusing on our clients along with their risk and return objectives in an effort to consistently generate competitive overall returns.

  • Global investment strategies

    We acquire property outright or acquire interests in joint venture formats for our clients. Our experience spans across property types, both traditional (e.g., office, industrial, rented residential, and retail) as well as specialty (e.g., self-storage, senior housing, and student housing). We believe our investment professionals execute investments across the risk/return spectrum. The private equity team’s resources include accounting, acquisitions, dispositions, portfolio and asset management, due diligence, and construction/engineering professionals. The team is supported by the broader Heitman platform, which includes all of our key business service groups.

  • Extensive experience

    Heitman has over 30 years of experience investing in private real estate equity. We believe that our real estate experience, business platform, and investment track record make us one of the leading managers in the industry. Our business aims to provide the highest level of service and meet the objectives of our investors. We sought to build our reputation on a track record of strategically investing on behalf of our clients. Through periods of market recovery and expansion or market correction, we believe we have maintained an active market presence, searching for mispriced opportunities, building our client base, and expanding our organization's resources.

  • Global investment philosophy

    Our collaborative, multi-disciplined approach to investment has been shaped over multiple market cycles. We seek to be acutely aware of each property sector’s vulnerabilities and behavior during periods of illiquidity, as well as its potential under improving economic conditions. Our investment philosophy and process is based on three key principles:

  • FOCUS

    Emphasis on high-quality, well-located property with the functional attributes to stand the test of time.

  • DISCIPLINE

    Conduct extensive analysis and risk mitigation to evaluate whether investments meet our standards.

  • VALUE CREATION

    Seek to identify inefficiencies to implement value-creation programs through active asset management, strategically using capital at each stage of the process.

Global Assets Under Management

  • 39.7

    Billion in assets under management

    USD as of September 30, 2024

Investing in private real estate equity has been a cornerstone of our firm over the past 30 years. We manage investment strategies across the risk/return spectrum.

Our approach is customized to achieve our clients’ goals. We focus on three primary strategies:

Core

Concentrated on investments in high-quality “stabilized” property, where a large percentage of the total return is generated by current income with low volatility. Portfolio construction is driven by sector weightings and asset selection that consider the economic exposure of a particular metropolitan area and geography.

 

Core-plus

While the commercial real estate industry has yet to establish a widely accepted definition for core-plus investing, it is typically described either as a moderate risk/return strategy or a predominately core strategy with an emphasis on a modest value-add approach. In Heitman’s view, a core-plus strategy targets somewhat higher returns than a core strategy through the acquisition of income-producing property and the incorporation of different risk elements in the portfolio construction process, such as emerging sectors or dislocated markets. A core-plus portfolio involves diversification of these risk levers, in addition to diversification of the more traditional dimensions of geographies, economic drivers, and property types.

 

Value-added

Consists of investments in “non-stabilized” property, where approximately half the total return is generated by growth with higher volatility. Investments with this risk profile are typically time-sensitive and by their nature are in a less efficient part of the investable universe. We seek quality property where we can identify a physical, operational, or financial improvement opportunity that we can address through active management and that has been mispriced by the market. Higher leverage is typically employed as part of the capitalization to enhance the return on equity.

 

Opportunistic

Designed for clients who seek investments in “non-stabilized” property, where the majority of the total return is generated by growth with higher volatility. These investments are typically capitalized utilizing a higher level of leverage to enhance the return on equity.

 

 

We strive to build long-standing partnerships with our clients — we succeed when they succeed.

Recognizing that no two investors are the same, we provide clients several alternatives for accessing our private equity investment capabilities.

Commingled funds

Heitman has formed and managed nearly 30 commingled fund portfolios since the 1980s.  The firm has experience managing  both open- and closed-end commingled fund opportunities in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, as well as globally focused investment strategies.

Core
  • Core focused strategies generally invest in stabilized properties across traditional and specialty property types.
Core-plus
  • Core-Plus Strategy: This strategy typically focuses on global portfolios that are diversified across sectors, geographies, and investment strategies utilizing three themes: divergence (smart diversification among traditional property types), convergence (capitalization of maturing or mispriced property types), and delinked (defensive investment in assets with underlying traits less associated with economic cycles).
Value-added
  • Value added strategies: These strategies seek value-creation opportunities by deploying capital wisely, and engage active management and operating partners to develop opportunities to achieve targeted returns.

Defined Contribution – CITs

Heitman has experience in managing collective investment trusts, or CITs, for professional managers of defined contribution plans such as 401(k)s and other similar qualified retirement plans.

 

Heitman manages CITs that trade via the National Securities Clearing Corporation with daily valuation, and provide access to private, core, and commercial real estate assets.

Separate account

Heitman has managed assets in separate account formats for a variety of clients for over 30 years. Our approach to these relationships is customized in an effort to meet or exceed each client’s needs and objectives. Each relationship is managed by a team of real estate investment professionals. Minimum relationship size may vary depending on a client’s return and risk objectives, in addition to the strategy and region in which it’s executed.

 

For detailed information on these products, please visit the Solutions page.

Our investment team members and property market research professionals follow the markets. To learn how we interpret developments in the industry, please click on an article below.

  •

    Resilience and Opportunity in European Specialty

    Featured in IPE Real Estate’s September/October 2020 issue: The longest economic expansion in modern history came to an abrupt end due to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing severe disruption to real estate markets. In commercial property, the pandemic has accelerated structural …

    October 1, 2020
  •

    Living Across Europe

    Featured in IPE Real Estate’s September/October 2019 issue: Why Build a Pan-European, Pan-Living Sectors Portfolio? Four years ago in these pages, we identified the Living sectors in Europe as a target for real estate investors seeking attractive risk-adjusted returns (“Introducing …

    October 2, 2019
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