BGO and its parent, Sun Life, made commercial real estate headlines last month with the announcement that multifamily owner/operator Bell Partners and BGO would combine businesses. Sizable as that transaction is, it’s far from the whole story BGO has to tell. In advance of his participation in Connect Los Angeles 2026 on May 28, for which he will be a member of the Industry Leaders panel, BGO managing partner, head of U.S. Jonathan Epstein discussed the investment thesis the firm is pursuing both domestically and globally.

Q: Has BGO’s investment outlook changed since the beginning of 2026, whether internationally or domestically? 

A: Our core thesis has not changed, but the path has been bumpier than we expected. Coming into the year, we held the view – against consensus – that a U.S. recession was not inevitable, that inflation was largely under control, and that capital markets were thawing. We still believe all of that. What’s shifted is the timeline. Mercurial trade policy, followed by geopolitical volatility, has delayed the recovery we were expecting rather than derailed it. 

Domestically, we remain constructive. We think the Fed has more room to cut, the 10-year is mostly anchored around 4% plus or minus 25 basis points, and U.S. growth is better than the headlines suggest—supported by outsized manufacturing capex, AI investment, productivity gains, and a policy backdrop that continues to incentivize onshoring. The numbers on that last point are striking: over a trillion dollars in announced U.S. manufacturing capital spending – roughly $270 billion in pharmaceuticals over the next 5-10 years, $200-300 billion in semiconductors, and $20-30 billion annually in defense and industrial. That’s a structural reindustrialization of the U.S. economy, and it creates durable real estate demand—for power, logistics, industrial, and the housing that supports those workforces. 

Internationally, the picture has actually improved. Europe is set up for what may be its strongest decade in two generations, with defense and capex spending, easing rates, and selective dislocation across the GP universe creating attractive entry points—particularly in Spain, Italy, the Nordics, Germany, and a re-priced UK. Asia Pacific is steadier, with Japan remaining a standout for office. 

At the firm level, we’ve also been building the platform with intention. In March, Sun Life—BGO’s parent — entered into an agreement to acquire Bell Partners, a leading U.S. multifamily investment and operating platform with approximately $10 billion of assets under management. Once closed, the transaction will bring BGO’s AUM above $100 billion and, combined with our existing exposure, take the platform to more than 40,000 owned units and over 70,000 total units under management. It reflects our strong conviction in U.S. multifamily – a sector where demand fundamentals remain durable, the country is structurally under-housed, and many global investors remain under-allocated. 

Q: How has BGO’s global cold-chain involvement evolved, and where are the regional supply dislocations? 

A: Cold storage has moved through distinct phases — from an overlooked niche a decade ago, to an institutional boom during COVID, to the recalibration we’ve been in since 2023. We think the next chapter is stabilization, and the setup is probably the most attractive it’s been since we entered the space. Supply has reset dramatically — deliveries are down roughly 65% from the 2023 peak — and permanent debt markets for stabilized core are back, which tells us institutional capital is committing again. In that environment, scale and discipline matter a lot more than they did during the boom. 

Our own footprint in the sector has deepened materially over the past five years. We started with a single real estate transaction in 2018, then participated in Lineage Logistics’ pre-IPO growth round—Lineage is now publicly traded. We’ve since launched a dedicated development vehicle for modern Class A facilities across the U.S., added smaller infill acquisitions, and engaged our lending and credit team in financing opportunities. That breadth — equity development, infill acquisitions, and credit — gives us multiple ways to deploy capital across the cycle. 

What stands out today is how uneven the supply picture looks across markets. Markets like Texas, parts of Florida, and Chicagoland have absorbed meaningful new supply above the long-term average, creating near-term disruption but eventual opportunity. In contrast, high-barrier markets like the Northeast and West Coast have seen limited new supply and remain more stable. We’re focused on markets where demand drivers — port volumes, food distribution networks, demographic growth — are strong but recent deliveries have been limited, and on tenant-driven development where underwriting is anchored to actual demand rather than speculation. Our pipeline today is weighted toward the Central and Western U.S., with meaningful allocations to the Southeast and Canada, and demand is almost entirely coming from food distribution, grocery, and pharma. 

On the demand side, we continue to see food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies seeking supply chain control and bespoke facilities through new development. At the same time, we’re identifying value-add acquisition opportunities — potentially with tenants already in place —in markets experiencing near-term disruption, which we think could serve as attractive entry points. 

Q: Within the core plus universe, what sectors look especially attractive as we go through 2026? 

We organize our core plus strategy around three themes: Power & Logistics, Healthcare, and Housing. All three are being driven by durable demographic demand on one side and capital-markets dislocation on the other—which is what creates mid-risk, mid-return entry points. 

Power & Logistics is one of our largest allocations today and continues to deliver meaningful rent growth. The through-line is access to power—whether that’s modern logistics, advanced manufacturing, or industrial adjacent uses like cold storage and IOS. The constraint on new supply is real and getting tighter. 

Healthcare is where we have strong conviction on a forward basis. High-acuity medical office and pharma related cGMP have very durable demographic tailwinds, and portfolio aggregation dynamics in the sector are creating attractive entry points. Expect that allocation to grow meaningfully over the course of 2026. 

Housing rounds out the themes, and it may be where we have the deepest structural conviction of all. Delayed first-time homebuyer formation, a housing shortage of more than 4-5 million units, and a rent-versus-own affordability gap near a 25-year high are all durable demand drivers for institutional-quality multifamily – and values have yet to reconnect with prior cyclical highs, giving us the opportunity to acquire well-located assets at meaningful discounts to replacement cost. 

Across all three themes, we’re consistently underwriting to pricing below replacement cost and below intrinsic value, which we think is the most important discipline in this environment. 

Q: Where do you see the opportunities for BGO’s new U.S. value-add industrial strategy? 

A: We are one of the largest logistics investor/owners (Top 5) and a longstanding investor in the space in the US. We have been consistent investors in the space, up and down the risk spectrum and both equity and credit and currently we think this is one of the more favorable entry points for industrial we’ve seen in roughly two decades, and our various investment vehicle strategies are built to capture three distinct but reinforcing opportunities. 

The first is strategic acquisitions of high-quality logistics assets where temporary oversupply has pushed vacancy higher and created what we’d call “high-quality vacancy on sale.” We’re investing in top-quartile markets, at meaningful discounts to replacement cost, and creating value through mark-to-market leasing and lease-up. 

The second is selective development. New supply is down more than 50% from peak, and the development pipeline is approaching decade lows. That sets up a compelling window to build best-in-class product in markets we’ve identified through our data-science research models – but only where we have sufficient power. Grid bottlenecks have become the real gating factor for new development across most of the country, and that’s created a scarcity premium for sites that can actually be built. 

The third bucket is industrial-adjacent: powered land that can serve data center demand, infill IOS sites in constrained submarkets, and advanced-manufacturing assets benefiting from onshoring. These are adjacencies where our industrial platform gives us an edge on sourcing and underwriting, and they add diversification without diluting our core logistics thesis. 

Put simply, the macro tailwinds for industrial—above-trend growth, easing rates, automation, supply chain resilience, policy-driven reinvestment in U.S. manufacturing—are converging with a supply/demand imbalance squarely in our favor and normalizing capital markets. That combination doesn’t come along often.

Hear from LA Leadership on May 28.
Gain direct insight from Los Angeles leadership, including Mayor Karen Bass and former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, as they discuss policy, growth, affordable housing and the city’s future. Don’t miss this high-level conversation—secure your spot today: www.connectLA26.com 

What do a multifamily community in Florida, a Class-A retail center in Alexandria, Virginia, and a large mixed-use parcel outside of Austin have in common?

Those three developments are representative of the diverse investment opportunities in the top commercial real estate markets in the United States, as identified by Avison Young’s new U.S. Investment Sales platform, known as USIS, which it established earlier this year.

James Nelson, head of U.S. investment sales for the global real estate advisory firm, said USIS is focused on multifamily, office, retail and other development projects in 12 CRE markets that generate roughly 40% of the average annual sales volume for the entire country. 

“If you really want to move the needle as a company or as an investor, you need to focus on these dozen markets,” Nelson said. “Our investment sales group is well positioned to expand our client relationships and identify new business opportunities in these metropolitan areas, leveraging our uniquely integrated teams.”

Nelson said Avison Young’s goal is to drive its sales volume in these markets for transactions worth $25M or more through dedicated research and business development efforts. Opportunities outside these markets are also presenting themselves as Avison Young professionals in other markets seek to leverage the national USIS presence. 

“Multifamily is the most desirable asset class right now, accounting for over a third of the dollar volume year to date,” Nelson said. “As for office, once you start getting more billion-dollar sales, like 590 Madison in New York, that’s really going to start pushing up the numbers.”

USIS partner and principal Erik Edeen added that there were 10 transactions worth more than $100M in Manhattan in the third quarter, at least one in each of the asset classes. It was the first time this has happened in five years.

“This highlights the availability of capital chasing larger deals across the sector spectrum and presents as a vote of confidence for the market in general,” Edeen said.

Despite their impressive performances so far in 2025, USIS’ 12 target markets aren’t even reaching their full potential, Nelson said. On average, these markets are performing at only about half the level they were in 2021 due to the CRE disruptions of recent years, such as higher interest rates.

“You look at these cities and you start to ask, for example, if Dallas is currently a $24B market, does that mean it could be close to a $50B market?” he said. “Or I can tell you that the 10-year average in New York was around $30B and right now it’s two-thirds that. These are big markets with a lot of growth potential.”

Nelson said Avison Young’s approach will appeal to investors who are looking for diversification across asset classes, geography or both. With its local expertise and 60 offices across the country, USIS can locate deals that meet clients’ unique needs and risk profiles, he said. This is particularly important for out-of-town investors who might be interested in growth cities such as Dallas or Charlotte. 

“With all the capital flowing to these major markets, we can help make introductions with our local boots on the ground to win more large-scale business,” he said. “Likewise, if you’re looking to sell, you certainly want someone who has expertise in the local market but who can also put it on a national or even global stage, and that’s what we’re really good at.”

Nelson said the representative developments — the Florida multifamily community, Northern Virginia retail center and suburban Austin mixed-use parcel — exemplify Avison Young’s ability to find and bring local opportunities to the attention of global investors. 

In Florida, 2211 Grand Isle is a 390-unit multifamily community on about 25 acres. Less than a 15-mile drive from Tampa, its garden-style apartments provide much-needed housing.

“There’s always going to be demand for this type of housing and occupancy numbers at 2211 Grand Isle are in the high 90s,” he said. “It’s a really solid investment for someone who’s looking for cash flow with upside potential.”

In Alexandria, 5900 Kingstowne Village Parkway features 88K SF of 100% occupied Class-A retail. As a key component of a much larger mixed-use property, the center also presents significant cash flow with further potential.

“Real estate investors like that theme,” he said.

Meanwhile, Revelry, a master-planned community near Austin, offers more than 200 acres of multifamily, mixed residential and commercial development parcels for sale.

Nelson said the USIS platform gives clients the opportunity to easily invest in projects like these in any of its principal 12 markets, with Avison Young providing seamless support across the country.

“In the brokerage world, especially at a lot of the big shops, there are a lot of silos where, if you want to invest in a dozen markets, you have to meet with a dozen different teams,” he said.

“The nice thing about Avison Young is we’re a principal-owned company with 750 owners and one database. If an investor wants to invest in particular markets, we all have access to that information here. That’s what we’re solving for, and with the traction we’ve already seen out of the gate, I couldn’t be more excited for the future.”

This article was produced in collaboration between Avison Young and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com. 

Endeavor Real Estate Group is moving into student housing.

The Austin-based firm—which already develops and manages a wide range of properties, including retail, office, multifamily and big mixed-use projects such as The Domain, Saltillo and the planned redevelopment of the Austin American-Statesman site—is launching a new student housing platform and has tapped veteran CRE executive, Jake Newman to helm the effort. In his 24 years of experience, Jake’s primary focus has been leading the development of over $4.1 billion and 12,000 units of student housing assets.

One of its first projects will be a mixed-use development at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. The Austin Business Journal reports TCU was looking for a private partner to design, build, finance, maintain and operate assets on its campus. The specific aim was to deliver a mixed-use development featuring housing, office, retail and parking across multiple university-owned sites.

Brea-based Healthcare Property Advisors has launched HPA Exchange LLC, a real estate investment sponsor that will provide accredited investors with private placement opportunities anchored by medical properties. The platform will initially focus on Section 1031 exchange offerings.

HPA Exchange will target healthcare real estate within secondary growth markets that exhibit strong operating fundamentals, stable health system environments and a growing aging population. Its management team averages 25 years’ experience in healthcare real estate, including co-presidents Thùy Turner and Robert Lee.

“The healthcare industry has historically been recession resilient with predictable occupancy rates, paving the way for the potential of long-term reliable cash flows and strategic value-add opportunities,” said Turner. “Non-high-acuity healthcare is also transitioning from large acute care environments like hospitals to well-located and well-designed strategic ambulatory care, typically closer to neighborhoods.”

Savanna, a New York City-based, vertically-integrated real estate investment manager, owner/operator and developer, has launched Savanna Advisory Services (SAS). The fee-based restructuring advisory unit offers restructuring and planning expertise along with full property-level execution of business plans to lenders and other commercial real estate market participants.

Current advisory assignments for the SAS unit include engagements for a global bank on a major NYC office building and a debt fund with a foreclosed mixed-use redevelopment project. Savanna has completed more than four million square feet of previous property restructuring experience with 14 different lenders and joint venture equity partners.

“Three years of COVID and two years of interest rate and capital markets illiquidity have put massive stress on property investments, and 2024 looks to be a crucial year when decisions must be made, and new plans instated and executed,” said Nick Bienstock, CEO of Savanna.

He continued, “Based on existing engagements and the multitude of additional inquiries, we believe there is considerable demand for restructuring advisory groups like SAS that can advise on complex restructurings and develop new business plans for distressed properties, providing full execution of the same by an experienced group.”

Foulger-Pratt has been building apartments and commercial projects for more than half a century, and now the Maryland-based developer is expanding into a new business line: build-to-rent. 

Courtesy of Foulger-Pratt

An aerial rendering of Foulger-Pratt’s build-to-rent community in Brandywine, Maryland.

The firm has been quietly working on establishing a BTR pipeline in the Carolinas and the D.C. suburbs for around two years, and its executives leading the effort told Bisnow Friday that Fougler-Pratt is officially launching the new platform as its first series of projects have closed and are approaching their lease-up periods.  

The five projects total 700 units of for-rent townhouses and single-family homes, and their combined project cost is $250M, Foulger-Pratt Managing Director Joe Clauser said. The projects are all scheduled to begin leasing within the next nine months. 

The developer is partnering with a pair of institutional investors, which Clauser declined to name. He said the firm aims to add around 1,000 more units to its portfolio over the next two years and continue to grow from there. 

“Our ultimate long-term goal here is to have a multibillion-dollar platform in this space,” Clauser said. 

The firm is expanding into the BTR space in part because of how challenging it has become to develop multifamily buildings, with rising interest rates and construction costs making deals difficult to pencil, Foulger-Pratt Vice President Nick Beeson said. 

“This really is a matter of shifting demographics,” Beeson said. “We are very bullish about the demand for this housing solution based on family-forming millennials as well as downsizing boomers, so there’s a lot of demographic tailwinds in this space, but also from a return-on-cost basis, these deals tend to pencil better than a lot of multifamily development right now.”

The move also represents Foulger-Pratt’s expansion into the Carolina markets. The Potomac, Maryland-based developer spent decades building around the D.C. area and has previously expanded to California, Utah and Texas. Its portfolio totals 23 multifamily properties, 15 office properties and 12 retail properties, according to its website. 

Founded in 1963 by Sid Foulger as Foulger & Co., the company today is led by Chairman Bryant Foulger and CEO Cameron Pratt. 

Along with the expansion, Beeson, a North Carolina native, moved from D.C. to Raleigh to lead the execution of the regional expansion while Clauser leads its capital partnerships and strategic direction from Potomac. 

“This is the splash, and it’s a sizable splash,” Beeson said of the expansion. “We’ve been actively pursuing opportunities in North Carolina for two years now. We were disciplined and judicious in what we elected to move forward on down here.”

The firm’s initial wave of BTR projects consists of four under-construction projects it is acquiring from homebuilders as they are completed, three in Charlotte and one in Raleigh, plus one in the D.C. suburb of Brandywine, Maryland, that it is building from the ground up. 

The Brandywine project will be 170 townhouses next to the Brandywine Crossing shopping center and a medical office building that Foulger-Pratt developed. 

The project is a rare example in the D.C. area of a build-to-rent community being constructed from the ground up, a strategy that has boomed in the Sun Belt and other regions. Nationwide BTR development hit an all-time high in 2021 with 6,740 new homes completed, according to RentCafe.

The D.C. metro area didn’t crack the top 20 largest markets for single-family rental homes in the RentCafe report, but it has begun to see some BTR projects moving forward. Another local developer, American Real Estate Partners, expanded into the BTR sector in August with the acquisition of a 200-unit townhouse community that is under construction in McLean, Virginia. 

Clauser said the D.C. area’s high housing prices make it difficult for rental product to compete with new for-sale homes, limiting the growth of the BTR market. 

“It was one of rare sites we’d found in the DMV area where we were able to get the land where we could get zoning for townhomes and deliver a product at a cost basis that worked for a rental product,” he said. 

Courtesy of Foulger-Pratt

One of Foulger-Pratt’s build-to-rent communities in North Carolina

In North Carolina, a market that has seen more BTR development, Foulger-Pratt has four projects: a 172-unit community in the Raleigh suburb of Wendell, a 144-unit project in the Charlotte suburb of Gastonia, a 128-unit community next to the Oak Hills Parkland Reserve in Northwest Charlotte and an 86-unit project near Gaston Country Club in the Charlotte suburbs. 

Those four projects were all initiated by for-sale homebuilders, and Foulger-Pratt reached deals to acquire them as they are completed and operate them as rental properties. The deals allowed Foulger-Pratt to buy homes at a discount to what they’d go for individually on the open market, and it helped the homebuilders reduce their risk in a for-sale market that has faced uncertainty due to rising interest rates over the last year. 

“In late 2022, we wanted to capitalize on the then-softening of the homebuilder market, the home sales market, and we pursued strategic partnerships with homebuilders who had projects underway in some of our target markets, and we found mutually beneficial solutions for them to pivot into the rental execution transaction with us,” Beeson said. 

As it works to grow its pipeline, Foulger-Pratt is looking to do more deals with homebuilders, and it is searching in a range of markets. Clauser said it continues to explore the D.C. area and North Carolina, and it is branching out to other parts of the Southeast, plus the Texas and Salt Lake City markets where it has built multifamily projects. 

“We want this to be a national platform,” Clauser said. “While we have certain target markets where we’ve been more focused, we view this as something that we develop throughout the Southeast where these tend to pencil best in the ‘smile states,’ and that’s where capital momentum is, as well, in higher-growth markets.”

The single-family rental market has faced some criticism as Wall Street giants have scooped up massive portfolios of homes in existing neighborhoods, but Beeson said there is a meaningful difference between that strategy and the BTR strategy of building new communities from the ground up. 

“This is not an asset manager coming in and buying up your grandmother’s neighborhood,” Beeson said. “This is new housing stock. This is bringing more homes to communities that need more residential supply.”