Real estate demands hands-on management

When portfolio managers deal in stocks or bonds, their primary responsibility is buying and selling the security. But as real estate investors, our responsibility reaches far beyond those two book ends.

Investing in tangible assets entails, not only the buy and sell, but also maintaining the physical asset, making improvements to enhance returns and ensuring high-quality, long-term tenant relationships.

This hands-on management requires large teams on the ground around the world. Nuveen’s real estate team is composed of more than 600 professionals, allowing us to capture opportunity throughout the investment life cycle.

Acquisition and financing

We start with city selection, evaluating the most promising locations by assessing factors such as scale, supply, liquidity, workforce dynamics, demographics, livability and climate risks.

Boots on the ground acquisitions teams put this research into action, as they source properties using long-term relationships with sellers, agents, lenders and tenants. These teams work in a sector-specialist model, providing best-in-class sourcing, underwriting, analysis and due diligence. They also leverage the firm’s extensive scale to identify the most efficient financing sources and structure.

Portfolio management teams make the ultimate acquisition and management decisions, based on fund objectives. Every potential acquisition is separately reviewed by Nuveen’s real estate investment committee.

Asset management

Nuveen’s asset management professionals lead the property management, leasing and development teams to ensure that each property is best positioned to generate the target returns.

Development and construction management:

In some cases, we may execute ground-up development and redevelopment projects. We can seamlessly manage every step of the development and construction process, including cost budgeting, value engineering, contract negotiations, general and subcontractor supervision and overall project management.

Property management:

Nuveen strives to maintain and enhance property values, using local property managers to address tenant concerns, manage ongoing building projects and monitor building conditions. Thoughtful decision-making, swift responses to tenant issues and strong working relationships with tenants, vendors and local authorities are essential to retaining asset value.

Leasing:

Our asset management team maintains successful broker and tenant relationships, both globally and locally, and carefully monitors the leasing market to ensure that we maximize tenant retention, rents and exposure to prospective tenants.

Disposition

Each real estate investment has a thoughtful exit strategy from the time of acquisition. The holding period depends on the investment profile, but may range from 5 to 20 years and is evaluated annually through a hold-versus-sell analysis. When an asset is sold, our portfolio managers work to achieve top market pricing and optimized returns.