Real Estate Forum - September 2015

The nautical references abound at TruAmerica Multifamily. CFO Karen Millan tells Real Estate Forum that president, CEO and founder Bob Hart, a “super-avid boater,” is referred to as the “captain of this ship,” the “captain at the helm” and his staff of “TruAmericans” as his “crew on board; there are no seas we can’t sail.” One thing is clear when speaking with several executives at the firm: they are all working there because they each have a high respect for their captain, who has led them to calm seas..

While the firm has only been existence
for a little more than two years, its roots go
back more than a century and a half. “The
roots of this company are with an insur-
ance company in New York called
Guardian Life,” Hart tells Forum.
“Guardian had been an investor with me
when I was president of Kennedy Wilson
Multifamily, and I had been working with
them for almost eight years. The seeds for
this firm were born at another place, but
there was a relationship between us of
trust, camaraderie and shared values. I was
learning about them and vice versa. We
started talking about what they wanted to
achieve and what I wanted to achieve, and
after 14 years with Kennedy Wilson, I
decided I would leave and form a new ven-
ture with them. They are one of the most
highly rated old-line insurance companies
in the country, with an insurance platform
that was built over the past 150 years.

They’ve been in business a long time and
take a very long-term view of what they do,
including investments in real estate that
really matched mine. It made investing
with them very easy.”
Hart’s goal was to create a new company
in the multifamily space that was very dedi-
cated to class-B multifamily product. “The
tenants are renters by necessity,” he says.

“Some call it affordable housing, but that
niche is not what we do. We focus on what
most people in multifamily live in—middle
market or class B. We buy and reposition in
all major cities in the Western US, and our
mission is aligned well with what Guardian
wanted to do. We’re not developers of class-
A, and we’re not doing class-C—we have a
strong commitment to class B.”
Hart shies away from using the term
“workforce housing” because it “sounds
like you’re talking about Section 8 or
affordable. I call it affordable because it’s
really what the $50,000-to-$70,000-a-year
household-income bracket lives in. This
income bracket applies more to the West
Coast class-B renter—in the Midwest it
might be a different number. I think call-
ing it class-B is the best way to describe it.”

He explains that TruAmerica acts as a fiduciary with discretion for Guardian’s and all of its investors’—including Allstate’s— institutional capital. “In general, we bring in other capital partners, that’s what we’re doing. We’re JV partners, but in my busi-

By Carrie Rossenfeld

With a crew of experienced professionals, this two-year-old company has exceeded its own expectations and navigated its way to the upper echelons of workforce housing.