There are a lot of things that people know about the Inland Group of Cos. (RECon booth C1027). It is one of the biggest names in commercial real estate with usually a ravenous appetite for acquisitions that have made the firm's combined subsidiaries one of the most formidable open-air shopping center portfolios in the country.
But what do people in the industry maybe not know about Inland? We thought it would be interesting to find out from Joseph Cosenza, the firm's co-founder and vice chairman. And below had some pretty interesting information to tell us.
On the firm's history: “Not everybody knows that Inland was originally started 47 years ago by four school teachers. We did it part time for about seven years. Then we all had to go full time because the business got too busy, and we couldn't do it at recess or lunch time or after 3:15. So we all left and went full time.
"From that point until today, as you look back, we started building houses, then small apartment building, and in the 1970s we started buying apartment complex. By the middle of the 80s, we had about 47,000 apartment units.
"Then by the end of the 80s we started into retail with Walmart and then buying land to develop in the future, and land was a white elephant at the time. And then in the 1990s, we started our first retail REIT.
"So up until today, the firm has sponsored more than 670 programs. What does that mean? Around 650 were private funds, you raise the money, you buy and manage the property to sell it, and then people get their money. Ten of them were public partnerships where we able to sell in every single state in the United States. And seven of them are REITs, of which five of them are now on the New York Stock Exchange in various ways. Either we did an IPO and listed, or we just listed, or listed part, or we merged a REIT with other firms.
"We have had total about 478,000 investors, and we've purchased since the beginning just under $40 billion of real estate. We have also been in 49 states with those properties, and it's totaled about 281 million square feet. The majority of that, without a doubt, is retail.
"No other real estate company in America comes close to these statistics. No other company has had the ability to grow and incubate so many different companies and entities.”
On how a teaching background was beneficial to the partners: “Generally there a couple of things that teachers really have. One of them is the ability to plan because you have to know what you're going to teach two weeks from now on a Thursday. You also have the ability to bring complex issues down to earth, so that a majority of the people can understand them. If you can't do that, you can't teach.
"We also have the largest real estate school in Illinois. We teach others how to get and renew their license.”
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