Lauren Hochfelder

Twenty-five years at a firm is a rarity these days, but it’s a milestone Lauren Hochfelder just passed. 

“I’ve been in Morgan Stanley’s real estate group for more than half of my life,” Hochfelder said. “It’s wild, and was definitely not my expectation when I joined as an investment banking analyst 25 years ago, but I really love our business.” 

That’s perhaps partly due to the fact that MSREI’s $54 billion business is global. The platform — which consists of 200 investment professionals in 12 countries — has core funds in the U.S., Asia and Europe, closed-end opportunistic funds, and also a dedicated net lease strategy. 

“We think the best way to generate returns for our investors, and deliver performance across our funds, is to marry a top-down, macro, global perspective on thematic investing with a much more granular, on-the-ground approach,” Hochfelder said. “Real estate is fundamentally such a local business, and we think we have the best local sharpshooters on the ground in each of our local markets.”

Key investment themes for MSREI today include the aging demographics driving senior housing demand, global housing shortages more generally, opportunities in industrial real estate due to supply chain disruptions, and continued e-commerce growth. 

Housing, more broadly, is a big theme for MSREI. “There is simply too little housing on a global basis,” Hochfelder said. “We’ve been investing in housing here in the U.S., in Europe — where there’s a perennial shortage of housing — and we’ve been active in Japan as well.”

Student housing is also a theme, with MSREI recently making a $262 million investment in a 600-unit, 2,000-bed student housing portfolio near the University of Mississippi.

Then there’s industrial. “We’re focused on the global supply chain, as we don’t believe the supply chain of the next 20 years will be the supply chain of the last 20 years, and that has significant implications in terms of the amount of industrial that’s needed, as well as where it’s needed,” Hochfelder said.

In terms of how Hochfelder celebrated her recent work anniversary, her MSREI colleagues put a meeting labeled “very important” on her calendar and she dutifully attended. “I walked in and there were 50 people there for a surprise party for me for my anniversary,” she said. “It was super sweet and thoughtful.”