CRE Veteran Launches Private REIT Targeting Multifamily, Office Conversions 

Jonathan Morris, a former executive at three publicly traded real estate investment trusts and longtime Georgetown University real estate investment trust professor, has formed a new investment vehicle aimed at seizing on discounted multifamily assets.

Morris has partnered with his former Georgetown student Bobby Wilson to launch Renaissance Realty Trust, a private REIT that will target existing apartment buildings and office-to-residential conversions initially in the Washington, D.C., region before branching out nationally, Commercial Observer has learned. The REIT will begin as non-traded with a goal of eventually turning public following a series of acquisitions.

The idea for the REIT stemmed largely from Morris coming across a number of largely vacant office D.C. buildings that were suitable for residential conversions and ripe for acquiring  at a low basis. Morris said Renaissance will use an Umbrella Partnership Real Estate Investment Trust (UPREIT) structure, transferring appreciated real estate in exchange for limited partnership interests with older apartment buildings while also exploring office-to-resi conversions. 

“The idea was to use this UPREIT process to acquire those properties so that we would not be writing a check and instead would be transferring equity in our REIT to them in exchange for their property,” said Morris, a former director of acquisitions at BXP (then called Boston Properties) and also Charles E. Smith Residential Realty before it merged with Archstone Communities. “We’re looking for the vintage apartment building that is well located and 97 to 98 percent leased, but the owners are individuals and they’ve depreciated the tax basis to zero or close to zero, so selling it for cash doesn’t work for them.”

The creation of Renaissance Realty Trust marks the latest chapter in a more than three-decade commercial real estate career for Morris. In addition to his REIT background, Morris was also  founder of LMH Realty Group, an affiliate of Lerner Enterprises, and managing director for capital markets at JLL. After a brief return to the REIT world from 2019 to 2020 as chief investment officer at Armada Hoffler Properties, Morris launched the REIT Academy in 2021.

Morris said the UREIT process offers many advantagesto a REIT, and he utilized a UREIT at BXP in the early 1990s to acquire notable buildings at a low tax basis,  including the Prudential Center in Boston and Embarcadero Center in San Francisco.

While Renaissance will begin with a focus on D.C. and suburban areas of Northern Virginia and Maryland, Morris said the REIT is exploring acquisitions nationally including markets such as Boston, Florida and Texas. Morris said he and Wilson are aiming for a regulatory offering to become a public REIT in the next 12 to 18 months. 

Wilson, who was a student of Morris a decade ago while getting his MBA at Georgetown, decided to team up with his former professor to create a REIT after a nearly eight-year stint leading acquisitions at Moore & Associates. He also gained experience on the brokerage side of the business from 2015 to 2018 at Cushman & Wakefield, where he arranged a number of debt transactions for D.C. properties while forging relationships with property owners in the nation’s capital. 

“We make a really good team from our networks when it comes to these older D.C real estate families,” Wilson said. “Jonathan knows a certain generation, and I know the one directly underneath it really well.”

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.