Ep 4 – Student Housing & Philanthropy: Building Durable Income Streams

Episode 4 of Inside the Family Office: Live Investor Panel

Real family office practitioners and allocators share how they structure deals, protect families, and think about wealth:  Family office principal Mark Weinstein shares how he combines a $1.5B real estate portfolio with a deep commitment to philanthropy, including dedicating 25% of his estate to charitable causes. He explains why his operating companies focus on multifamily and student housing, what he learned owning thousands of beds across major universities, and how the asset class behaved through COVID. Mark details his new value-add student housing fund, diversification across campuses, and how he thinks about 1031s, depreciation, and long-term holds. Dr. Cook adds context from her vantage point as both professor and investor in student housing communities.

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Transcript

Welcome to episode four of Inside the Family Office, live investor panel, student
housing and philanthropy building durable income streams. In this discussion, Family
Office Principle walks through a 1 .5 billion portfolio spanning multifamily and
student housing and explains why he is allocating 25 % of his estate to philanthropy.
Now you're going to hear his thesis on major university markets, how student housing
behaved through COVID, and why he's launching a value -add student housing fund and
how he thinks about 1031 exchanges, depreciation, and long -term cash flow,
all while keeping charitable impact front and center. To now turn it over to Mark.
I started the Weinstein family office a few years ago and I also have two operating
companies one is a multi -family and one is in student housing and one of the
things that Kipp said resonated with me in my family office 25 % of my estate is
going to go to philanthropy it's it's really an important thing to me I have 12
-year -old kids and a wife and you know I try to lead by example and so
philanthropy is a mainstay both both hands -on philanthropy and giving and leveraging
philanthropic contributions is something I'm very passionate about and it's great to
hear that a lot of other people have it on their focus so right now we have about
a billion and a half dollars a portfolio of real estate I'm a majority owner we
have 2 ,000 apartment units We had 8 ,000 student housing beds,
but we sold about 2 ,000 to take some of the profits off the table. And we've been
doing student housing since 2007. And consistently over the years,
we've made really great returns. You know, we've ended up holding things a lot
longer because the cash flow has been so good. And we have a lot of depreciation.
And if If we're gonna sell them, we usually do 1031 exchanges. And a lot of our
investors and other family offices that I work with were suggesting that we do a
fund and we've never done a fund before. We'd always raise money from myself and
from other family offices and high net worth individuals. And now we're doing student
housing fund. We're focusing on value add student housing across the United States.
Right Now, our thesis has always been, we're at major universities like University of
Michigan, UC Center, Barbara, BYU, University of Illinois, University of Iowa,
Oregon, Washington State. A lot of different universities, and one of the thesis was
that if you bought well -located student housing in markets that students wanted to
be at and had good sports teams, you know, and you're walking distance to campus,
and this would be a good formula for success.
came back to school and we had really high collections. You know, it was a little
bit more operationally intensive during the pandemic, but it turned out to be very
successful and it's continued to be very successful. We're the largest owner in Utah
of student housing.
We were diversified at a lot of different major universities, but this fund will
allow us to leverage what we've already been doing very well and be more of a
mutual fund for people. So when someone, a lot of people have said they want to,
you know, have a diversified portfolio. And this is kind of, if you think of a
mutual fund, we're doing a student housing mutual fund where we won't put any, too
much money in any one deal and we'll spread it across a $75 to $100 million fund.
We're not positive. We're just finishing the PPM. And we're going to be talking to
a lot of RIAs and other family offices to see the fund and we're looking forward
to getting it going. And so that's kind of the latest thing I'm working on.
Very exciting. And I am personally a fan of student housing. I'm also a university
professor in addition to an investor. But it's a built -in community. So just like
you said that they want to return to their housing near campus and be part of
that, you don't have to do a lot of community building yourself within the real
estate that you're developing because the university has provided that sense of
community for your residents. So it's a great segment. And thank you for sharing
about your fund. You just heard episode four of inside the family office,
live investor panel, student housing and philanthropy, building durable income streams.
Mark just showed us how a single family office uses student housing as a resilient
cash flow engine while building a long -term philanthropic legacy for the next
generation. If this episode helped you think differently about real estate and giving,
follow the show. Send it to a fellow investor and join us for episode five,
where we close the mini -series with seven pillars of passive income and how to
avoid later cycle traps.