Former BlackRock Head of Real Estate Joins CrowdStreet’s Investment Committee

CrowdStreet has tapped Jack Chandler, founder of Majesteka Investments Holdings, as a voting member of the investment committee for CrowdStreet Funds and a member of the company’s Board of Advisors.

Chandler will work closely with Ian Formigle, Chief Investment Officer of CrowdStreet, to help guide the firm’s investment thesis and directly provide deal-level input into its investment funds, such as its recently closed Opportunistic Fund. 

Before Majesteka in 2017, Chandler served as managing director and Global Head and Chairman of Real Estate at BlackRock, the New York City-based global investment management corporation and the world’s largest asset manager, with $7.4 trillion in assets. Chandler also spent 25 years with LaSalle Investment Management as the Global Chief Investment Officer and Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman for Asia Pacific. “At LaSalle and BlackRock, we had big global platforms, and we were starting to do more and more things with non-defined benefit plans and getting into the various flavors of retail,” Chandler told GlobeSt. 

Majesteka is a private firm providing strategic leadership and capital for disruptive companies at the intersection of real estate, asset management, and technology. In his role at Majesteka, Chandler works with multiple companies in the proptech space. 

“We’re not only providing capital, but also experience and perspective real estate tech companies that are doing things that seem interesting,” Chandler says. “I had been introduced to CrowdStreet’s founders three or four years ago, and spent some more time with them. The more I saw, the more I liked the people, the mission and how they were approaching the business. So it was a natural evolution and progression to get to where we are today.”

Chandler sees the difficulty that individuals have getting access to the same kind of real estate assets that institutional investors can acquire. 

 “I thought CrowdStreet had a really interesting approach to bringing institutional investment opportunities to individuals,” Chandler says. “So, I thought that was a pretty interesting mission.” 

Given where interest rates are, Chandler thinks CrowdStreet’s platform fills a void for investors. “We all know that society is aging,” he says. “People need stability and income in their portfolios. And with interest rates at zero, it’s really hard to get.”

Unless an individual buys into a REIT or is an accredited investor and gets into a limited partnership or a friends-and-family deal, it’s not easy for them to access real estate.

“With the JOBS Act [The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act in 2012] and with, and the technology that groups like CrowdStreet have, all of a sudden you could be running your personal investment portfolio and you have the opportunity to invest in curated private real estate, which I think is a really attractive opportunity for individual investors to add to their portfolio,” Chandler says.