Atlanta Co-Living Firm Pivots To Building Affordable Housing Owned By Community

Timber REITs are a relatively little-known niche in the REIT world, accounting for about 3% of the Hoya Capital Housing 100 Index, which tracks the companies that make up the U.S. housing industry.

Yet the niche isn’t quite as obscure as it once was, riding demand for its products and higher wood prices to new prosperity. The coronavirus pandemic, in short, has been good for the sector.

Here are 10 things to know about timber REITs.

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For many recent college graduates, their conception of real estate as a career choice doesn’t diverge that far from the reality shows seen on HGTV. It’s all about fixing, flipping and selling homes. For Rachel Horwath, 22, and Caden Fosnaugh, 21, who both graduated this spring from Chicago’s Roosevelt University with a major in real estate, it took time and exposure to, as Fosnaugh put it, “move from the HGTV mindset.”

Both were initially attracted to studying finance and business before discovering one of the relatively rare opportunities to get an undergraduate degree in real estate, especially compared to the focus on master’s degrees for institutional real estate roles. Both students took very quickly to the major and now the career path: Horwarth is working this summer for Prologis as a property manager for industrial sites, while Fosnaugh is in the midst of an internship with the commercial real estate team at CIBC he’s doing remotely from his family home in far suburban Woodstock, Illinois. 

Their experiences suggest that the CRE industry’s talent pipeline should make more inroads into undergraduate education, and even high school, as many students aren’t aware of the multiplicity of options in the industry, and the different career paths possible in commercial real estate.

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In Case You Missed It...

When Brian McLaughlin began his career in real estate in 1997, he lived in a low-income housing community that his nonprofit organization, the Crispus Attucks Community Development Corp., served in York, Pennsylvania. 

He now serves as president of the nation's seventh-largest nonprofit affordable housing developer, Maryland-based Enterprise Community Development, a role he took on in August 2019.

In between these two nonprofits, McLaughlin has worked for a variety of private and public organizations. He spent three years with Maryland's Department of Housing and Community Development, 11 years with Fannie Mae, three years with Commercial Development Inc. and five years with Lantian Development. 

As a special assistant to the CEO at Fannie Mae, he had a front-row seat to the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. And he has now navigated a pandemic with Enterprise Community Development, which owns more than 100 apartment communities and employs more than 360 people. 

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