Mike Sales, Carly Tripp and Nadir Settles.
Mike Sales, Carly Tripp and Nadir Settles
CEO; global chief investment officer and head of investments; global head of real estate impact at Nuveen Real Estate
Last year's rank: 40
Nuveen Real Estate’s specialist model has served it well in a volatile market.
The asset management subsdiary of TIAA has pieced together dedicated property sector teams aimed at navigating through various market cycles based on which asset classes have wind at their backs. This resulted in Nuveen leaning heavily during the past year into industrial, self-storage, data centers, grocery-anchored retail and affordable housing.
“We’re a through-cycle investor, and we’re set up perfectly for that with our specialist model,” Nadir Settles said. “Having these sector specialist teams and being able to focus on the sectors that have tailwinds allowed us to be able to continue to attract deal flow and look for opportunities even in challenging times.”
Nuveen, whose investments are overseen by Carly Tripp, was especially active on the affordable housing market front in 2023, acquiring assets totaling $3.5 billion. One of its acquisitions involved a 1,200-unit portfolio largely in the New York City region from Omni Holding Company for an undisclosed price that raised Nuveen’s affordable housing assets under management to $6.4 billion. In September, Nuveen laid the groundwork for more affordable housing investments by launching its new U.S. impact housing fund through a $250 million commitment from a TIAA account.
Nuveen also found plenty of opportunities to scale its debt platform over the past year with $1.7 billion in loans closed in 2023, despite contending with higher interest rates. The company’s Nuveen Green Capital arm also had plenty of success in 2023, originating more than $800 million of commercial property assessed clean energy (C-PACE) deals, which equated to financing 41 percent of 2023’s C-PACE deals across the commercial real estate market.
“Real estate debt has been a real focus for investors because they’re getting equity-like returns and they’re protected on the downside,” Mike Sales said. “That’s an area of the market that we’ve had success in over the last sort of six months.”
