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Podcast Summary: Capital Allocators – Episode 353: Michael Levy – Crow Family Real Estate Empire
Podcast Overview Capital Allocators, hosted by Ted Seides, features in-depth conversations with leaders in the institutional investment industry. Episode 353 focuses on Michael Levy, CEO of Crow Holdings, a family real estate empire with a rich history and diverse portfolio.
Guest Background
- Michael Levy:
- CEO of Crow Holdings, which has been operational for 75 years.
- Previously COO of the Investment Management Division at Morgan Stanley.
- Transitioned from New York to Dallas to lead Crow Holdings.
Key Topics Discussed
- Background and Transition to Crow Holdings
- Path to Leadership:
- Michael describes his early life in New York and his professional journey, highlighting experiences in investment banking and real estate finance.
- Discussed a pivotal meeting with Harlan Crow that led him to move to Dallas and take leadership of Crow Holdings.
- Leadership through Financial Crisis
- Role at Morgan Stanley:
- Managed restructuring during the financial crisis, dealing with high leverage and liquidity issues.
- Emphasis on understanding the reality of valuations and how to navigate investor relations during turmoil.
- Lessons Learned:
- Importance of transparency and communication with investors, particularly during tough times.
- Need for a strong moral compass and ethical leadership.
- Crow Holdings Overview
- Company Structure:
- Four main business lines: wealth management, real estate assets, real estate private equity, and real estate development.
- Emphasis on a decentralized management approach that empowers teams.
- Cultural Philosophy:
- The culture at Crow Holdings is characterized by honor, trust, and commitment.
- Significant focus on relationships and a long-term view in business dealings.
- Market Opportunities and Challenges
- Current Market Conditions:
- Challenges in the real estate market due to rising interest rates and a bifurcated opportunity set.
- Identified strong prospects in industrial real estate, multifamily housing, and sectors benefiting from demographic trends.
- Investment Strategies:
- Focus on development versus acquisition strategies, and understanding local market dynamics.
- Discussion on unique investment niches, such as manufactured housing and convenience stores.
- Future of Crow Holdings
- Vision for Growth:
- Emphasis on creating opportunities for employees and aligning interests with investment partners.
- Plans to evolve the scope and scale of Crow Holdings without losing sight of company values.
- Personal Insights and Lessons
- Influential Figures:
- Mention of key mentors who shaped his professional approach, notably Rob Foulson and Owen Thomas.
- Michael shares insights on the importance of patience, fairness, and building trust in leadership roles.
- Personal Reflections:
- Expressed a strong disdain for market forecasters and their predictions.
- Advocated for a careful, measured approach to investments and business strategies.
Conclusion The episode with Michael Levy provides valuable insights into the world of institutional real estate investing, emphasizing the significance of culture, leadership, and strategic decision-making in navigating market complexities. The discussion also highlights the importance of personal relationships and ethical considerations in capital allocation.
Key Takeaways
- Leadership Style: Focus on building trust and understanding team dynamics.
- Market Awareness: Recognizing the need for adaptability in response to changing economic conditions.
- Investment Philosophy: Prioritizing long-term relationships and integrity in business dealings.
- Cultural Importance: Cultivating a strong company culture that aligns with the values of all stakeholders.
For further details and insights, listen to the full episode on [Capital Allocators](https://capitalallocators.com).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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2:31Hello, I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation. Through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital. You can join our mailing list and access premium content at CapitalAllocators .com. All opinions expressed by TED and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Capital Allocators or their firms. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
3:11Clients of capital allocators or podcast guests may maintain positions and securities discussed on this podcast. My guest on today's show is Michael Levy, the CEO of Crow Holdings, the family real estate empire founded by Trammell Crow 75 years ago that today includes longstanding family holdings, $30 billion in assets under management in real estate investment and development vehicles, and a diversifying portfolio of non -real estate assets. Before joining Crow, Michael had a long career in real estate finance and investment management at Morgan Stanley that culminated in his serving as COO of the investment management division.
3:51Our conversation includes Michael's path from New York to Dallas, managing through the financial crisis, lessons in asset management leadership, and the unique nature of the culture, relationships, and breadth of real estate investing at Crow. We also get his take on opportunities and risks in the current markets. Before we get going, this week on Private Equity Deals, we've got a truly tasty deal for you. Hank Hartong from Brinwood Partners discusses its carve -out and creation of hometown foods. Brinwood carved out Pillsbury's dry food business from Smucker's five years ago, and through a series of operating improvements and tuck -in acquisitions, took it from a small brand to $850 million in sales.
4:39His firm, Brynwood, is one of those middle market gems. It's a 40 -year -old business with fund sizes less than a billion dollars focused on a little niche of food and beverage that's produced stellar results for investors. You won't want to miss how Brynwood makes this work with some names you know on private equity deals. Thanks so much for tuning in. Please enjoy my conversation with Michael Levy. Michael, great to see you. Thanks for having me, Ted. It's good to be here. Why don't you take me down the path of how a nice New York boy like yourself ends up in Dallas? I am a nice New York boy.
5:18I was born, raised, schooled, and worked here for 50 years. At the end of 2014, I met this really interesting guy named Harlan Crow, and he was looking for someone to lead the company as he was moving towards retirement. environment. We talked, I met him in his office down in Dallas, and he was one of the most interesting people I had met. And I had interviewed over the years for lots of jobs over time. In talking to people, they want to know about my business life and my career. And my discussion with Harlan had nothing to do with that. It was who was I as a person and who were my grandparents and my family.
5:50And it was the most interesting multi -hour discussion I'd had. And that led to multiple discussions. And after some period of time, I looked at my wife and my wife looked at me and said, we're going to take this leap. And this isn't Kansas anymore. We're not staying in New York. This is an opportunity in Dallas. But that was seven years ago that I made the move at the age of 50 from New York down to Dallas. And what was your path to be prepared to be in that seat, having that conversation with Harlan? Like anyone, it's the culmination of events that happened to you along the way that you're living your life.
6:19And I was born and raised in Long Island in Nassau County. My dad was from Brooklyn, traditional New York metro background. I wound up going to NYU, which was the best school I got into. After NYU, I went to Brooklyn Law School and I worked during the day and got through school at night. And when I was done, I talked my way into a job in investment banking, and that was 1994. And they dropped me into the real estate group because in 1994, Wall Street was bailing out Main Street after the SNL crisis. And so I got a lot of chops very early on. There's tremendous amount of deal flow happening at that point in time.
6:51I was at Prudential Securities, and I understood in that business that there was class B firms and class A firms. And so I was able to navigate my way to Salomon Brothers. And they quickly got gobbled up by Citigroup. And I said, well, that's in the wrong direction. And then in 1998, I was able to navigate over to Morgan Stanley, who at that period of time was definitively the world's best in the area of real estate finance. And the group I entered was real estate investing, real estate banking, and real estate lending as one group. And so in terms of a young person on the street. It was just a great, unique opportunity.
7:26Along comes 2007, and I'm co -heading real estate investment banking, and I start working with pension funds on large restructurings and bankruptcies of real estate as we go into the financial crisis. But by 2008, a year and a half later, it was Morgan Stanley's turn. And so I took my hat off working for clients, and I put my hat on working for the management team of the firm and for the board over the next six, nine months restructuring the real estate group, which had run itself off the rails and the balance sheet of the firm, which had significant real estate exposure. So I got a lot of different experience during that period of time and transitioned my career at that moment in time from being an advisor to being an investor.
8:06I then worked in the real estate group for a few years with a new group of people to help redevelop that business. and then I worked across all alternatives. So whether it was infrastructure, credit, venture capital, that was the business unit and I had a management role across that. Then shortly thereafter, the firm asked me to oversee the liquid equities and fixed income investment management division at the firm. And so my career went from being a line deal guy to being a manager of an organization. And I had experience through good times and bad times. You asked me the question, what prepared me for this?
8:43I think it was all of those experiences, going through the bad times, working across different business units and developing from being a deal guy into leading and managing a business. I want to circle back to a couple of those steps and maybe start with the financial crisis. What were the types of problems that you were dealing with inside of Morgan Stanley on the real estate side? There were really two firms who were leaders in terms of real estate, private equity, Morgan Stanley and Blackstone, there were investments, hundreds of them across all asset classes. But the common theme was very high amounts of leverage and cross -collateralization in funds that did not have the liquidity to manage themselves through.
9:25In addition, the firm was using its balance sheet to bridge billions of dollars of investments that would effectively be warehoused at the firm and ultimately moved into investment management vehicles. There were also open -end funds in Germany that we had formed. You put illiquid assets like real estate into liquid open -end daily NAV, daily redemption vehicles. There were real estate hedge funds. It wasn't only the real estate, it was the vehicles and the ventures, the relationships with investors who were very disappointed, the firm that was on the verge of bankruptcy. There were issues that if a given fund received a going concern opinion from the auditors, it could trigger the ISDAs across the entire Morgan Stanley firm and take it down.
10:07So there were very complicated issues over a period of time. And the intensity lasted for nine months or a year. So when you saw all that mess, what is it that you were able to do in those couple of years? The old adage, in the land of the blind, the one -eyed person is king. Well, in my investment banking work, working with pension funds, I had worked on restructurings and bankruptcies in the residential land business, which was the first thing to go. That business really started to turn around in 2006, 2007, before the broader commercial real estate. So I had experience on restructurings and bankruptcies, and I kind of knew what to look for.
10:47So the first thing was get your arms around the facts. What is it that we own here? What is it that the funds have? And the first thing is establishing what I'd call good bank, bad bank type structures. What were we going to be able to save and what were we not going to be able to save? And so the first X months, we're just focused on what is it that we own? What is the reality of valuation? What is the reality of liquidity? How are we going to get to the other side? And then how are we going to capitalize things? We're going to have to call all the capital for investors. Well, investors knew at the time we're calling the capital, they were effectively putting a match to that money and yet they were committed to it.
11:25So then it became about investor responses. And there was a lot of anger and concern. And then we had to restructure funds and various committees were established by investors. And so during that period of time, you then move to restructuring some funds and agree into new governance and new controls. Ultimately, Morgan Stanley stepped up and did provide liquidity. They did the things that they needed to do to make sure that the investment vehicles didn't go bankrupt. I got to credit them for the acts that they did. This wasn't the one and only problem with the firm. And so they had other things they needed to deal with.
11:59But the management team of the firm and the board of the firm stepped up and did the things necessary to help provide the liquidity to get these vehicles to the other side. You have these conflicting interests, Morgan Stanley itself having trouble. You're the general partner of vehicles, and then you have the investors in the vehicles. I'd love to hear a story of where some of those tensions come in and how you resolve them. The benefit I had, I was not the person responsible for the go -long decisions. I didn't have that emotional baggage and I didn't feel beholden to the management team of the firm.
12:38I just felt like I was part of a team coming in to do the right thing and restructure things and get this thing to the other side. It wasn't the conflicts as much. It was the tension between the investors being so disappointed and so angry and having to try and manage that, being on the other side of people that you're working so hard to help them. You and the team are doing everything you can, and they're so angry at you. And just as a professional trying to work through that, trying to say, I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help and get them on board to understand that. That was the most difficult emotional thing that I had went through at the time.
13:19There were issues of fees. There were investors who said, listen, you just got to stop all fees. And the firm said, well, we're not going to do that because we have a business unit and we've got to pay people to do the job. So there was a conflict there. You would like to think under those circumstances that the firm would have said, okay, we'll stop charging all fees. We'll deal with this. This was above and beyond in terms of losses. They didn't take that decision. My personal view on it at the time was I maybe would have liked to have seen them take more of a move there. So that would be one thing I would highlight to you because I felt for the investors, I think one fund was a 0 .2 multiple, another fund was a 0 .3 multiple.
13:57These are dark days. So as you come out of that and you move into more of a broader management role across some of these asset classes and not just the deal person in real estate, what was different being in that seat from what you might have thought from your prior experience? Well, the first thing that was apparent to me, and it goes back to why I got back into real estate, is the moment I left real estate in terms of my responsibilities and took responsibilities across other asset classes, such as venture capital or credit, I can get the wool pulled over my eyes pretty quickly. I'm not an expert investor in any of these sectors.
14:34And while I have general investment acumen, this is not my neighborhood. That was an uncomfortable place for me to be. And at some level, I felt at times like a bureaucrat, because in real estate, those are my chops. And my ability to engage as deep and drill down into the deal, to the fund, to the relationship with investors, to the business, all of that is a landscape that I understand and have intuition around. These were asset classes I had no intuition around, and that was uncomfortable for me. But at the same time, it did build my chops with respect to managing people and working through organizational constructs and conflict amongst people and the reality of leadership in a different way.
15:18And so I grew from being uncomfortable, but it was uncomfortable. What were the ways you learned to manage in that setting? I learned to manage through the conflict where different people in the organization wanted different things and were at odds with each other and trying to work through that. There's a tension, particularly in a large financial institution, by the people working on the deal teams and the firms often because there's only so many resources to go around. Managing that resource allocation where nobody is really happy. I learned a lot from that process. I also had a role where when I went into the liquid side, equities and fixed income, some of the more powerful investors did not want a new guy in the job.
16:00They didn't know me. They didn't want me in the job. They viewed themselves as in control of their business. And here's another Morgan Stanley guy that I don't know coming in who has a different background, not from the liquid side. And so I really got to deal with hostility coming at me and working through that. And those are very human things. and every organization has those. What'd you learn about working through it? So many mistakes that I made through that. One of the things that I learned that was really reinforced is that many large organizations and small organizations too, they bring a new person into the role, accomplished, not accomplished, and they have expectations.
16:37You're gonna spend 90 days, you're gonna figure everything out, you're gonna come up with a plan and you're gonna execute it. I recognize if you have a business in free fall that that might be necessary. But if your business isn't in free fall, That's not really the best way to go about it. You really need to take the time as a business leader, if you have the time, to really get to know the people and try and build trust with people in whatever way you can connect with them. From there, if you're given the time, you can then step back and from that trust you've built, really rethink the business strategy and work with them to execute on it.
17:14But I learned this idea because I was dropped in and my boss at the time pretty quickly, okay, in 90 days, you're going to come back. We're going to make the following moves. We're going to change the following things. I had no time to build trust. And I walked into a group of people who really didn't want me in the seat. So that's something that I learned from that experience. So when you get this call from Harlan, you mentioned those initial conversations. It wasn't about what you had done. It was about who you were. I'd love to hear what kinds of questions was he asking you? Tell me my grandfather's life story.
17:46Where did it come from? What was his background like? Who were his parents? How did you grow up as a kid? What did you do when you were a kid? Who are your friends? What do you like to do with your time? What are you interested in? How about my kids and my wife and my family? And it was all about understanding me as a person that we all have our stories that brought us to this point. And that went on for hours. There was no discussion of, oh, I see you went to NYU and you worked at Morgan Stanley. There was none of those discussions. Those came later. And that was very different. What was his organization when you came into the fold?
18:25From a, call it a strategic perspective, highly decentralized way of leading and managing. Aligning people from a economic perspective, and then largely getting out of the way, not ruling from the center, allowing groups of people doing different things to have the responsibility to run their business activities. That was a philosophy at the firm that went back to his dad who had built the business. When I joined the organization, we had four main business lines. The first was coming out of the S &L crisis. The family had been investing in private real estate for 50 years. And the S &L crisis in the early 90s hurt them a lot.
19:06And so it meant that never again will I be in only one asset class. And so Harlan and the family started investing in hedge funds and stocks and bonds. And that portfolio grew. And then in 2010, that portfolio, a terrific guy who was running it and is still running it today said, I want to get in the wealth management business. Can I hire some people and can we go out and manage money for other ultra high net worth families? So the first line of business is we have a multifamily office business or a wealth management business that has nothing to do with real estate. There's a team of 40 people who wake up every day and they invest in stocks and bonds and private equity and hedge funds and they do a terrific job.
19:47The second business line are real estate assets that the family has developed over the past 75 years that we managed to hang on to. Big, large hotels or office campus. Each one of those assets is a story and it's a business in and of itself. And together, it's a meaningful portion of our overall portfolio. The third business that was there was a real estate private equity business. It had been in existence for 20 years and with a great track record and a great team had quartered in Dallas. And then the last business was a real estate development business that was largely focused around multifamily and apartment buildings.
20:22What was the history of the organization and where the wealth came from? So his dad was a poor kid from East Texas that served in World War II, married a young woman from Dallas whose parents had died, left her a small grain business. And in 1948, he had the vision to build an industrial business because he learned in the grain business that people needed space. He built a small industrial building in Dallas on Cole Street that we own today on what they call a speculative basis. He didn't have a tenant in hand. He just went out to build the building and thought they would come and they came. And that was very unique.
20:59That didn't happen in America back then. If you built an industrial building, you had a tenant in hand. And so from 1948 all through the 1950s and by the 1960s, his dad became one of the largest real estate developers in the United States. And by the end of the 1960s, he was developing around the world, including in China. He was developing in the 1970s. So the company by the 1970s was widely regarded as the largest real estate developer, manager, leasing company in the United States. So how does it come about that what starts as effectively a family office, real estate holdings, turns into an organization where they're bringing an outsider from the family in to run it in what could be the third generation.
21:43Trammell had six children. Some of them had worked in the business at various points in time earlier. But after the S &L crisis, Harlan was the only one working in the business. And Harlan really saved the company. As a relatively young man, that was a terrible time for real estate. The company was hurt. And Harlan did an amazing job of resurrecting the company and bringing it to what it was. And so as Harlan was approaching this chapter in his life and thinking about retirement, there were no other family members to run the business. There are no other family members in the business. I think there's another lesson that can be learned.
22:17And now today, I know lots of family businesses, most family businesses do have family members continuing to run it. But I think we've also seen that just because you're a family member doesn't mean you're necessarily equipped. And I think you also see organizations where if you have a lot of family members working in it, you may not get other people from the outside who want that opportunity in their careers to join. And so I think Harlan had somewhat of a philosophical point of view that it will be good to have a non -family member running the business. Ultimately, that wasn't about me. It wound up being me.
22:49And it also wasn't someone from inside the company, which he could have, of course, done that. We have so many talented people, because I think that he had wanted someone with a different background. And I have a different background than anyone else who was at the company at the time. So as you came in, you have four different business lines. How did you set out to organize this and view the role that you were stepping into? Well, the first thing was do no harm. The culture of the firm is phenomenal top decile. If you knew us and you were in the real estate business, it is an amazing... His dad and Harlan, the culture they have set up, the way they have managed the business, it is a top decile firm from a culture perspective.
23:31And I knew that. So the first thing was, do not bring your New York, Wall Street attitude. And he wouldn't have hired me if he thought I was that kind of guy. But do no harm. Make sure, and going back to my earlier comment, my job wasn't to come in there in 90 days and come with a new business plan. It was to build trust. And so I spent a year just listening, learning, getting to know people, and to understand the organization. When you've been around 70 years, there's lots of history. and you need to uncover lots of rocks to understand that. Because if you make decisions early on, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes.
24:08And so when I came in there, I knew my job was to keep my ears really wide, keep my mouth really small and get to know people. We're a real estate company. The people at Crow know how to build things. They know how to operate things. And I had to spend a lot of time around the United States with all of our teams who build things and really understand that side of the business much better than I understood from working out of my New York City office. And that was my first year on the job. How do you define that culture, that special culture at the organization? Honorable, good, committed, talented, decent people who shake your hand, their word is their bond.
24:51When I worked on Wall Street, which is, I think, consistent across many firms, the relationship between the people and the firms, for the most part, the large firms at least, are more mercenary. And I don't mean that as a bad word. I mean, it's an annual contract. You pay me a certain amount of money, you cut me a deal, I work here. And there's nothing wrong with it. That's not our culture. That's not who we are. I would say for every four people that I would have brought on board previously, from a talent perspective, for roles in an organization, today, I would only hire one of them to fit into our culture.
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25:23Because you learn that by looking in people's eyes, You learn that by spending time with them. You learn that by breaking bread. If you give people responsibility, autonomy, and you don't try and control them from the top, they can hurt you, obviously. Their moral compass is the most important thing. And so I worked for a firm that became a bank, and it definitely became a culture of compliance and control. And you see that all over the large financial institutions. That's not who we are. And so it's really important that our people have an outstanding moral compass. and they're good, honorable, decent people.
25:58And since the family treats us that way, the family doesn't view the business as theirs. The business isn't the Crow's family. The business is a partnership between the people that work there and the Crow family. And you can feel it when you work there. And so people take that responsibility on. That's how I describe our culture. As you traveled around in the early years, what did you find that was similar and different from what you expected coming in? I had a fair amount of time to get to know the company before I came in and lots of people. So I think my expectations of what I would see were largely in line with what I did see.
26:34But the overwhelming feeling that I had then and today is, I had always believed when I worked in New York that it really was the capital markets created the value, that we were really smart. We could deal with complexity. We could structure things. And what I really came to realize, no, no, no, no, no. These are the people who create the value. The people who build the buildings, the people who operate the buildings, don't get me wrong, you need to be a smart investor and you need to have the right capital structure and the right alignment. And those are all critical elements. But the real estate, how it's located, how it's leased, how it's designed, the architecture, the planning, that's really where the value is added.
27:12That became overwhelming to me at the time and it's overwhelming to me today. And I see it in the dichotomy of the way people engage in the business today. You have this long legacy of the family developing and owning these assets that they've held on to. It turns into a multifamily office. How did you think about the value of externally managing capital instead of just continuing to manage the family's assets? We've had this discussion a lot. I think what excites the family is creating opportunity for people. Otherwise, it's just money. It's great. It's terrific. We can invest in lots of things and we can get a financial return on it.
27:53It's terrific. And people can live their lives. But that doesn't really create opportunity for people. And the engagement with people, they're part of our business family. They're part of our culture. We are one. And watching hundreds of people, I mean, over the years, thousands, but even today, hundreds of people create opportunity for their families. Hundreds of people create multi -generational wealth for their families. That's what the Crow family is interested in. And that's why we're not just managing our own capital, because we're trying to grow to create opportunity for the people that work there.
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29:19Learn more at srsaquium .com. That's S -R -S -A -C -Q -U -I -O -M .com. And now, back to the show. When you have this multi -decade breadth of experience in real estate, and then you go to manage outside capital. How do you decide what that mandate will be? We have a strategic but evolving point of view on the real estate opportunities in the United States, and we love to partner up with people to pursue those opportunities. There are lots of things that are impossible to figure out. Where's the economy going? What's the stock market going to? Where are interest rates are going? But there are some things that are just obvious, and we all know it.
30:02And so if you look at real estate and you say to yourself, what are the obvious things are going to create growth on a secular basis into the future? They're obvious. It is obvious Americans are moving to the Southeast and Southwest. That is not a cyclical move. That isn't about COVID. That's happening for lots of reasons we all know. But one of the surefire ways to make money in real estate, invest where people are moving to. Second thing is this e -commerce thing. It doesn't take a genius to realize that this train has been coming at you for a long time and it's going to continue into the future.
30:35What's the impact on real estate? More industrial, less retail. So industrial is an asset class. Sounds like a good place to be. The third point, and you see this, this is a secular trend, and these trends evolve and change over time. We are so underhoused in America. The amount of nimbyism that's stopping the development of multifamily housing, we have millions of Americans who don't have places to live, particularly just let's call it working class, let alone the disadvantaged, but even upper middle class today. And so we are massively under supply. So investing in various forms of housing, investing in industrial, investing in the Southeast and Southwest, those are big secular themes.
31:16There are other things that we do, probably too many to list here. And then there are things that we don't do, but those are the things that we do and we focus on. When you set out those themes and they all sound like head nodding obvious stuff, how do you take it from there into an executable strategy? There are two ways to pursue the strategies and it would have to do with risk return. There is a higher return development strategy and then there's a lower return acquisition strategy. So on the development side, what really matters is your ability to build buildings well, to identify the right locations and build them on time and build them on budget and get them leased.
31:50We have great acumen and great skills at that. We have 20 offices across the United States where we have development teams on the ground in these local markets. And on that side, that local market expertise is everything. And so fundamentally, it's building the machine. It's building the development capabilities. And ultimately, investors see that acumen. They see that capability. They see that over 50 years, you've never failed to build a building, that you're good for your word. And so the first point on that side is having the development acumen. On the acquisition side, you know what matters in real estate a lot?
32:24Relationships. Getting the first call, the last look, and the benefit of the doubt is everything in the real estate business when it comes to the acquisition side of things. How is that done? It's how you've treated people in the past. How have you treated the brokers, the bankers, the lawyers? How have you treated land sales? Have you delivered on your word? People are nervous when they're selling something. They have a choice to give it to X or to Y. That choice might be influenced by the broker who's standing in between. We have 75 years of developing relationships with people. And so the execution of that isn't only the investment acumen by the team that's sitting in Dallas.
33:01It's the shoulders of giants that we sit on over 75 years who've earned us the right to get the first call, the last look and the benefit of the doubt. And those would be the two main strategic elements, for lack of a better word, that give us better positioning to take advantage of these opportunities than most. You mentioned the 20 development offices. What's the breadth of Crow Holdings today in terms of offices and people? We have about 24 offices in total. We're a Dallas headquartered firm, but the real estate's all over the United States and our people are over of the United States. We have about 550 people working at the firm.
33:38They work in those businesses that I just outlined to you. We have another business line now that's in the energy business. And so we build solar farms as well. We're involved in the traditional energy business. So there is a fifth business line today. But we have 550 people and the vast majority of them are engaged in the real estate business. How are you viewing the opportunity set today? There are these couple of themes on top that aren't really changing anytime soon. There's a very difficult time. This is without a doubt since 2008, 2009. We are here in terms of the amount of challenges as an industry, and it's very different this time around.
34:12We don't have complete failure of the banking system, but instead of interest rates dropping to the floor, we have interest rates going through the roof. And in a highly levered asset class like real estate, these cash flows are being hurt. And so we are clearly in a period of duress from a capital markets perspective. But it's a very bifurcated market because the fundamentals underneath things like industrial and multifamily are really terrific. But the fundamentals, something like office, are awful. And so the opportunity is very bifurcated based upon cities, based upon asset classes. But in general, the market is seizing up.
34:49The bid -ask spread, the amount of uncertainty that's out there. The best opportunities that are being executed today are really in the private credit space. It's providing both senior loans and mezzanine loans to borrowers who can't get their traditional financing done with their banks. And that type of return is clearly a mid -teens, can be a high -teens, unlevered return on reasonable credit risk. There are structured equity solutions. You have managers, developers, operators who are committed to doing things from a growth perspective, but they can't sell buildings in order to get the liquidity to meet their needs.
35:27And so you're able to invest at the entity level and get relative bargains collateralized by more complexity in the business today. Those would be the two most actionable opportunities. The rest of the market is in wait and see for the most part. When you have this opportunistic pool in real estate across all these different offices, how do you organize your internal effort to make investment decisions and allocate capital? Most of the offices outside of Dallas are development offices where people on the ground are doing one thing. They are either building multifamily buildings or they are building industrial buildings and they're experts in the local market.
36:03How we capitalize that activity will depend. It might be a one -off joint venture on a single property with a financial institution. It might be a programmatic venture to develop 20 buildings with a pension fund or it might be a commingled fund just to do development with us on a proprietary basis. That organization is pretty straightforward. It's very broad, but that's part of the business. And within that, how do you decide in any particular project? Is that a pocket that's going to be part of a fund for other investors? Is it a single asset? Our development company has what I'd call a rotational structure.
36:43So we have a pipeline in any given year. Next year, it'll be less than this past year, but nonetheless, a multi -billion dollar pipeline in any given year. It's a lot of capital in any given year. And so we have structured our pipeline on a blind basis into rotational slots. For example, you investor have the right of first offer with respect to one fourth, one out of every four deals is yours. You have the right to do that deal with us. You don't have the obligation to to do that development with us, but you have the right. And so we've broken the pipeline into these rotational slots that allow us to have an exclusive relationship.
37:18So someone does not feel like we're cherry picking, which is the concern. And that structure, one, helps us because we're so large that there is no investor in the world that can meet all of our needs. Two, we can't be captive to just one investor because investors change their mind. And three, it just provides opportunity because there's just a lot to go around. And it works for the investors because they're comfortable, because they've seen it and they've vetted it with us, that they know our pipeline in general. And they know the amount of opportunity they're going to see in a given year is going to be more than enough, that they can pass on things that don't make sense for them.
37:55And they don't have to go and fight in the marketplace and get beaten up in some auction process. It's been a win -win. We've been executing that structure for the past five years, and our investors are really happy with it. And how about on the acquisition side? Completely different. And so there is a wall up between these businesses. We don't co -mingle these businesses. We have different leadership teams. We have different capital structures because obviously you can start to think about the conflicts embedded in co -mingling these two businesses. The acquisition business, the team is located almost entirely in Dallas, Texas.
38:28We have about a hundred people. They're led by a terrific guy named Bob McLean who's been with the firm for 35 years. That team is organized along different sectors, industrial, multifamily, retail. And those teams have the expertise and they're broken up geographically and they pursue opportunity across the country based upon the capital that we have. And so we have a value add investment business. We have a core plus investment strategy. We have a structured equity team. We have a credit capability. And then we have a small food and service retail platform. And so those are five different investment vehicles that do not have overlapping mandates.
39:10When you're in the marketplace and you know the local market in Savannah or Charleston or Raleigh, and you know the brokers and you know the landowners and you know the market, you're going to see lots of things coming your way. And so our team is able to source opportunity. And then around each of those platforms, we obviously have dedicated portfolio management teams that are focused entirely on that capability, particularly things like credit, where it's a very different underwriting than on the equity side. I'd love to hear some about where you think competitive advantages lie. I mean, you certainly talked about relationships in local markets, but as you go through the diligence process of a deal, the underwriting, the acquisition, what makes someone better than the next participant in the space?
39:57Well, look, the first thing is it's such a big fragmented business. There are a lot of terrific firms out there with very capable people. It is very difficult in the business to be truly differentiated to the extent there are in some areas. So that's the first thing. And we have so many terrific competitors out there are really good. I'd highlight the following thing to you. Ask if the investment team has ever leased a building, managed a building, operated a building. Do they really know the underlying real estate? Have they spent their whole lives just underwriting spreadsheets? Obviously, you need teams of people who do both.
40:28You should have people on your team who've leased a building, who've managed the building, who's operated, who understand the business plan that you get out of an investment committee deck and a spreadsheet. And I think one of the differentiating factors for any firm could be making sure that they have people who really understand the underlying business and have lived it, as well as the financial experts. Because real estate is definitively two sides to a coin. It is a marriage of the underlying assets in the capital markets, more so than other industries. Not every other industry, but most other industries.
41:00And so I think a differentiating capability is having that built together. I give Blackstone the most credit for this. They really figured out a long time ago, treat the capital markets well. A differentiating feature that you have is ability to get the loan. I'll give you an example for us right now. In this past year, the real estate development industry in the United States has had a very difficult time getting loans from lenders. We haven't. We've been able to meet our needs. So why have we been able to get that? It's because of our relationships with these lenders. We borrow primarily from local banks, regional banks, some of the money center banks, but these are deep relationships.
41:36But we value the capital markets. We value these people and treat them that way. In addition to some of the core sub -asset classes you invest in, there's been a couple other interesting ones in your other category. Run me through the most interesting aspects of some of these other real estate related areas. For a long time, we have been an investor in these niche or specialty sectors. I'll focus on something today that is the most interesting thing to us, and we've been pursuing it for a number of years now. It's an area called manufactured housing. We have a housing crisis of epic proportion, and there are 15 million pads, sites in America where you might use the word trailer park, that might be a common word, but it's manufactured housing, where millions and millions of Americans live.
42:22These are owned primarily by mom and pop owners who for many years haven't reinvested in them. They may not look that great, but these are people's homes. These are Americans' homes and they own the home. So when you invest in manufactured housing as the owner, you own the dirt, you own the pads, and you provide services to these people. But these people own their homes and their homes are as valuable to them as your home is to you. And so we're able to go in and acquire from small owners and fragmented owners across the country, these properties, there might be 150 homes on it, there might be 250 homes.
42:59And in many cases, they haven't been invested in for years. And so the landscaping looks terrible. Whatever clubhouse was built back in the day looks terrible. There's no modern systems to take in payments. There's not a property manager is that responsive. And so we're able to bring some degree of what I'd call institutional capabilities to improve the properties, to make these places nicer for the people that live there, to improve the value of their homes, because the whole place looks nicer, because their liquidity event is to sell the home. Yes, they can hire a trailer truck and they can move the home from the site to somewhere else, but that's very expensive.
43:37to pick up a home and to move it is thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Most of these people do not have that money. And so the value of the home is important to them. And so we're able to go in there and make these communities physically nicer. In exchange for that, we're able to get somewhat of an increase in rent. We have to be very thoughtful and very careful about that. But the value add that you can pursue in this is tremendous. And the economic return is rewarding for it. And the risk is very low because there's no material capex beyond the beginning fixing up the property because you don't own the homes.
44:12You're not responsible for the maintenance of the homes. You just own the pads and hook up to the various utilities and you manage the clubhouse and other common areas. Is there anything else in these sub areas you're particularly excited about? We have loved the convenience and gas business for a long time. We have been buying and selling convenience and gas stations for 20 years, and it really works different than the real estate business. Because a lot of these opportunities come because of the oil companies and the energy companies looking to sell at a moment in time for reasons that may or may not be related to the underlying real estate business.
44:47And it's a strategic decision for them. If you also think around America, they're really smart in where they put these properties. These properties have the right corner cuts at the right street corners, but with high visibilities. And so if they never worked as a convenience and gas station, they could work as another retail property. We've been doing this 20 years. We have bought and sold hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these properties. We have not had a single day in 20 years that a tenant has not paid us rent. And so this has been a terrific business, but it's its own unique ecosystem.
45:18And we also structure relationships with the operators of these properties. and we effectively provide for them an ability to buy back in time the property. So if they create value and they grow this and they grow their cash flow and they want to own this when we're ready to sell, they have the ability of buying it. So we're not taking their business away from them. We're providing financing to them that allows them to meet their dreams. And they execute on that a lot. It's a different thing than a private equity firm coming in and buying it up. We're providing financing ultimately to the local people who are running the physical properties and they find that attractive.
45:57Are there any other of these like multi -decade investment niches you've been involved in? Student housing. I know American education is going through huge changes and there are lots of schools that are failing. But if you look at the top 50, 100 schools that have great football teams and these schools are growing, look at the stuff that probably you and I went to college and I sent my daughter to Ohio State and you couldn't believe how beautiful her student housing is. And given how expensive education is, the additional cost you're spending as a parent to give them nice housing is relatively small.
46:27So this trend has been very popular and it prices at a discount to multifamily, but not that much of a discount. When you've had this big gap in the credit side, how do you think about the allocation of capital between equity -related investments and credit -related investments? I think at this moment in time, all things being equal, the bus is tilted more towards the credit opportunity and tilted away from the equity opportunity. It doesn't mean there are no opportunities, but like many others since the spring of 2022, we have not been constructive on the equity side. We have not made any major new commitments on the equity side.
47:03There's a distress out there, but that distress is largely the office sector. The other sectors from a fundamental supply, demand, occupancy, rental growth, they're doing just fine. Even retail. I mean, forget malls and power centers, but retail is doing fine because there's been no supply to speak of for 15 years. Multifamily is doing fine. Industrial is doing fine. So there's no distress at that level. The bid -ask spread is wide because the seller says, look, I can hang on to this thing. And yes, I don't like my cost of debt financing and I got to refi it, but I'd rather refi it with this Mez loan than sell it to you for a song.
47:39So the sellers are able to hang on and the buyers are like, listen, I'm not going to pay that price. You'd like to execute more, but the bid -ask spread remains pretty high in the business today. On the onset, you said there's a bunch of things you do and there's a bunch of things you don't do. What's in the category of what you don't do? We don't do office buildings and that has nothing to do with COVID. We've done a lot of things over a long time, but we really came to the conclusion in the early 2010s that this asset class office buildings and our experience with it is incredibly volatile. Just at the point in the time when the economy's in the tank, you've got to write these huge checks to attract new tenants.
48:13You've got to write checks for leasing commissions and tenant improvement dollars. And so your cashflow gets crushed and you've got huge amounts of volatility in the cashflows of these buildings. If you get that timing wrong, because nobody can predict these things, it crushes you. And so we just decided that we wanted more stability, less volatility in anything we're investing in. And so we exited the office business some time ago, and we have today in the business, 600 plus properties. Other than our terrific office campus in Dallas, which is a unique property, we have no office buildings in our entire portfolio.
48:50We also have no hotels. And hotels are very similar. The amount of capex necessary to keep them current. The industry always understates, it lies to itself as the amount of capital needed to maintain properties. The brands are constantly cannibalizing you with the next property near you, taking away your customers. People who own the real estate are separated by three, four degrees from the underlying customer. The person owns the real estate. There's another party who's the manager who gets paid off for revenue. There's a franchise or a brand who's getting paid off the revenue. There's Expedia who's taken a slice off the revenue.
49:23And then there's all this new supply that comes online in the names of Airbnb and VRBO. So that asset class, if you really study it over time, it's not a great risk -adjusted return. I don't mean to say there aren't people who've made money hotels, but if you really look at the industry, not a great place to be. I don't think there's that much institutional interest because I think people realize that as well. And there are also markets that we're just not constructive in. I love our country. I love every state. I am a patriot, but there are places that just people are not moving to and they're not going to move to.
49:55There are cities that are in major distress in our United States and we are just not going to be investing in these places. So there are markets that we're not active in and there are property types that we're not active in. There are other things we're not active in, not because we dislike them or have a fundamental point of view, but we just haven't developed the expertise over time. Like I'm very interested in the data center business. It's clearly a secular trend. And there is no doubt that in the years to come, it's going to grow, but we haven't done that before. So if we were to do that, we're going to need to figure out how to develop some expertise, perhaps on our own, before we would look to partner up with people and prove out that we know what we're doing in this space.
50:35And so there are a couple of things like that, that we find interesting and attractive for the future, but we're not pursuing today. How do you think about the process of something like data centers of entering a vertical that thematically looks attractive, but today you don't have the expertise? Having done this a number of times, it always starts with hiring a good, honorable, decent, capable, talented person who has expertise in that asset class. And that person needs to be patient. They need to understand that we're going to evolve. I don't know what this will become. We are trying to figure this out.
51:09We have a point of view on this business. We're going to give you the opportunity to go and figure it out. We're going to provide you resources. We're going to provide you capital. but we're going to take it one step at a time. After three years of that, you know, you think, you know, when you start something and you have a deliberate strategy, but as you go through things, you realize that deliberate strategy emerges. And that's what we did with the solar business. That was an idea three years ago. We had a terrific guy on our team who was not working in the solar business, who had a deep interest in it.
51:40And I said, why don't you go figure this out. Well, today we have a team of six or seven, eight people. We have numerous sites that are under contract right now. We're going to build out a very large solar business across the United States. We're less than three years in, but it's clear to me now this is working. We got the right secular theme. We got the right team. We understand this business. And so sometime in the next year, we'll probably take that and we'll probably look to partner up with people because we've proven to ourselves. It's like in the liquid investment management business. You have a small group of guys, you give them a small amount of capital, they get a three -year track record.
52:17Once they get to that level, they can go out and talk to people. In any business building, our perspective is similar. You start with a person, you're going to make a whole bunch of mistakes, get to the point that you really have developed the expertise, and then scale that when you get to that point. Alongside that pursuit of opportunity and then opportunities for people, how do you think about scale in terms of Crow Holdings as a whole and where you might want to take this over the next bunch of years? There are no earnings targets. There are no AUM targets. We don't care. It's not relevant.
52:51We have structures in place such that if our investors do well, the people that work there do well, and the Crow family will do well. It's that simple. And what we're trying to do is just create opportunity for the people that work there. And you understand, if you're not growing as an organization, you're not creating opportunity, you're going to lose people, right? And so fundamentally, that's my mandate. That's my mission. Create opportunity for the people that work there. And so there is a general pattern of pursuing growth, expanding the scope of the nature of what you do and expanding the scale of what you do as it makes sense.
53:26This energy business has been about expanding the scope of what we do. And over time, we'll expand the scale of what we do. In the real estate investment business, not too long ago, we only had a value add investment capability. Today, we have all these other capabilities. We expanded the scope of what we did. 70 years ago, we were nowhere in the industrial development business. We were always a large developer in the multifamily business, but the industrial development business had ebbed and flowed over time. And today, we're one of the largest industrial developers in the United States. And so it's an evolving scope and scale.
54:00And occasionally there's a spinoff of a business or a team. There's no desire to hold it all together. There's a desire to evolve over a period of time with the business. I keep coming back to creating opportunity for the people that work here. It's about aligning ourselves with our investment results with our investment partners. It's making sure that our people participate in that and making sure that Crow Holdings equally participates in that. And it will all work itself out. And after 75 years, the truth is, it's all worked itself out. If you could pick out one or two people that you've learned key lessons from, who and what would those be?
54:37When I started working in investment banking, one of the first guys I worked for is a guy named Rob Foulson. Rob taught me the power of calm, deliberate, analytical persuasion. That's who he was. And from that approach, the power of that to be persuasive to the people around you. And I learned that. I didn't understand that, but I learned that from Rob, coupled with he's just a terrific guy. And that was so valuable to me. The second person that had a profound influence from my life is a terrific guy named Owen Thomas. And if you're in the real estate business, everybody knows OT. Owen ran Morgan Stanley Real Estate when I was there.
55:12And I had the privilege of being his ops officer. They take you offline from your deal job and you go alongside, at that time, Owen, and you do whatever he does and help him out. I got to learn from one of the greatest leaders and managers. What I learned from him is fairness. He's got an incredible sense of fairness and being fair to the people around him. And as a result of that, he's been able to, in his career, attract and retain some of the best and brightest people out there. and the power of an organization when you have just great people working for it. Owen never tried to take credit for things and everybody felt they were part of his team.
55:50And I learned that from him and I'm grateful to him. And luckily I still see him quite often. He's a terrific guy. Michael, I wanna ask you a couple of closing questions. What is your favorite hobby or activity outside of work and family? Reading and learning. And it evolves and changes and I get my teeth into an idea or something. I just wanna know. What's one fact that most people don't know about you? I like to drive cars on the track. And it isn't about the sense of loss of control or being at the edge. It's the only place in life that I truly focus. I can meditate occasionally. You want to talk about staying focused on something?
56:29Driving a car at a high rate of speed around the corners. If you don't focus and pay attention, you're going to have an issue. And I love that sense. And there's also a Zen -like sense of being one with the vehicle and the balance of the car as you get it around. Man, what a great feeling. What's your biggest pet peeve? Forecasters would tell me they think they can see the future of the economy, the stock market interest rates, and say it with conviction. It drives me crazy. Which two people have had the biggest impact on your professional life? It probably is Robin Owen, but there's another guy who really influenced me.
57:04When I joined Morgan Stanley in 1998, there was this guy, Chris Niehaus, that I worked for, who for the first time in my life really gave me a review. He didn't just like give me a bonus and slap me on the back and tell me I was doing a great job. He sat down with me and have dressed me down and told me the things that I really needed to improve upon and really needed to do well. And he told me the thing that I knew at the time. I was impatient. Chris really helped me. I learned a lot from him. He's still a dear friend, one of the old school, pre -IPO, true advisors, thoughtful guys. He had a huge impact on my life.
57:40What's the best advice you've ever received? Something I always think about. When I was joining Morgan Stanley, I interviewed with Joe Perella. Joe was this statesman and larger than life. And Joe was like, hey, Michael, only the paranoid survive. And there's a grain of truth to that. All right, Michael, last one. What life lesson have you learned that you wish you knew a lot earlier in life. Don't listen to those guys who tell you they can guess the future with respect to the stock market, interest rates. When I was in training, there was this wonderful guy, technical analyst named Ralph Alcampora at Proust Securities.
58:12And he came in with his charts and graphs, man. And I thought he was just spot on. And I spent years listening to people like him. And I finally woke up a long time ago. I was like, they really don't know. They certainly don't know more than I do. So that would be something I wish I learned earlier on. Michael, thanks so much for sharing this really interesting story with Crow Holdings. Well, thanks for giving me your time. Thanks for listening to the show. To learn more, hop on our website at capitalallocators .com, where you can join our mailing list, access past shows, learn about our gatherings, and sign up for premium content, including podcast transcripts, my investment portfolio, and a lot more.
58:52Have a good one and see you next time.
58:58Thank you.
From the publisher
Michael Levy is the CEO of Crow Holdings, the family real estate empire initiated by Trammel Crow seventy-five years ago that today includes longstanding family holdings, $30 billion in externally managed and development real estate, and a diversifying portfolio of non-real-estate assets. Before joining Crow, Michael had a long career in real estate finance and investment management at Morgan Stanley that culminated in his serving as COO of the Investment Management Division.
Our conversation includes Michael’s path from New York to Dallas, managing through the financial crisis, lessons in asset management leadership, and the unique nature of the culture, relationships, and breadth of real estate investing at Crow. We also get his take on opportunities and risks in the current markets.
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