Geolo Capital, the private equity investment group for John Pritzker’s family office, has tapped Hector Calderon as its chief investment officer.
Calderon, who led a real estate investment team at Encore Capital Management, will grow the family office’s real estate portfolio, particularly in the multi-family sector. Calderon will target ground up development, acquisitions, and debt and equity investments.
Geolo is a developer, investor, and lender for the hospitality industry and multi-family real estate. The group has invested in real estate projects worth $2.5 billion since 2003.
Geolo is looking to invest in areas outside expensive gateway cities like New York and San Francisco. It’s targeting newly popular areas and cities that are still near employers such as Charleston, Raleigh-Durham, and Savannah on the East Coast, and Denver, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City in the West.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest in suburban centers that are just outside the urban core, but still near employment,” Calderon told Institutional Investor. “This predates Covid, but the pandemic in many ways has further called into question the trend we’ve seen over the last 20 years of renters willing to sacrifice space to move closer and closer to the urban core, because of commute times and all of the issues that come with living far away from work.”
According to Calderon, Geolo will look target locations that have “a blend of the best features of urban living, but aspects of the suburbs.”
“A friend of mine came up with the word ‘surban,’” he added. “That does a good job of identifying where we’ll be looking to invest.”
The new CIO expects that 60 to 75 percent of the portfolio will be “ground up” investments.
“But we’ll dedicate good resources to value add as well,” he said. “Those may be a residential asset where its best days are behind it, and it needs rejuvenation. We’ll partner with folks who are good at rehabbing.”
Geolo won’t focus initially on the single-family home market, Calderon said. “But we’re trying to understand alternative rental products like build to rent and what some call horizontal apartments,” he added. “They look and feel like single family, but you have a clubhouse and other shared amenities.”
Calderon previously ran the Homebuilding Investment Banking group of JMP Securities, where he served as an advisor in homebuilding mergers and acquisitions, and capital markets transactions.
