My Story: Andrew Segal

Real estate was never a choice for Boxer Property founder Andrew Segal. His love for the industry began when he played in the office of his father's student apartments as a one-year-old, and he never considered another career. (Sorry astronauts and firemen--this boy daydreamed of triple net leases.)

Andrew tells us his first job was buying a vacant office building in Dallas, which he still owns. It was 1992, and he moved from NYC (where he grew up, although he was born in Montreal) to Texas because he heard it had great people, schools, and infrastructure but was struggling from the oil bust and had lots of vacant buildings. At the time, he was living in a $19/day room in a Red Roof Inn, driving a $270 car, and couldn't afford a name for his company (or AC, but that's a different story). Six months later, he had tenants in the building and Boxer Property was officially born.

Andrew originally got equity by calling up friends who drove fancy cars in college, he tells us. (People would ask his exit strategy and weren't amused when he replied he'd go bankrupt like everyone else.) In '93, he bought two office buildings, the next year he bought four, and the rest is history. 21 years later, his firm owns 11M SF across the country and has a third-party management division with 5M SF. The firm's Chicago area holdings include the 294k SF Concourse Plaza (4709-4711 Golf Rd in Skokie) and 107k SF Fox Valley Executive Center (75 Executive Dr in Aurora).