The Advisor’s Guide to Commercial Real Estate Investment

Dr. Lynn is CEO of a yet-to-be announced alternatives platform investment manager based in San Francisco. Previously he served as Executive Vice President, Chief Investment Strategist, and head of Portfolio Management at Cole Real Estate Investments, Inc. In this role he led the firm’s overall investment and business strategy, portfolio management, underwriting, research, and comprehensive credit analysis for the entire $12.4 billion portfolio (public and private real estate), producing at stock price appreciation of 44 percent and an average total return of the private equity funds of 15 percent. He directed the engineering and execution of Cole’s portfolios across all funds (Cole REIT (ticker: COLE), CCPT IV, CCIT, Income NAV) with strategic and tactical direction in acquisitions, dispositions, and overall fund management. He directed underwriting (including deal structuring) and was an active member of the firm’s Investment Committee (IC), actively contributing in the areas of investment policy, portfolio design, acquisitions, tactical decisions, research, reporting, and integrated investment solutions.  Dr. Lynn brings real estate, statistical, economic, research, and technical expertise gained at some of the best institutional real estate investment firms in the industry to the science of portfolio management.

Dr. Lynn was a Partner and Managing Director at ING Clarion and then Clarion Partners, where he directed the firm’s strategic and tactical investment decisions for $22 billion in core, value-add, development, retail, industrial, multifamily, and hospitality, as well as a variety of separate account portfolios. He has held senior investment and development executive management positions at AIG Global Real Estate (Global Head of Research, Portfolio Management, and Strategy), AvalonBay Communities (Head of Investment and Development for the largest market area in the firm), Bidcom/GE Capital (automating and digitizing GE Capital’s entire $15 billion commercial mortgage real estate book), The Keppel Corporation (one of the largest property groups in Asia comprising a $32 billion portfolio), and the Target Corporation (National Development Project Manager for the Property Development Group, an $70 billion revenue firm).

Dr. Lynn has been published, interviewed, and written about in numerous national and international real estate, finance, and business media publications and programs. He is well-known in the industry for his numbers-driven approach, forecasts, and analytical techniques. His theoretical work on financial distress developed a new analytical framework for analyzing macroeconomic distress. He has written five critically-acclaimed books and over seventy published articles, chapters, and papers.  His authored or coauthored books include: Active Private Equity Real Estate Strategy (John Wiley and Sons, 2009), Emerging Market Real Estate Investment (John Wiley and Sons, 2010), and Real Estate Mathematics (Private Equity International, 2011), and The Advisor’s Guide to Commercial Real Estate Investment (National Underwriter Company, 2014) and Privatization and Financial Distress in Emerging Market Countries (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2008). He writes the “Capital Trends” column in the National Real Estate Investor. Dr. Lynn was Professor of Practice at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, where he designed and taught a class on commercial real estate investment, portfolio management, and development.

Dr. Lynn earned his Ph.D. and MS in Financial Economics at the London School of Economics. He earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Sloan School of Management, MIT, where he specialized in Finance and Real Estate. He earned an MA at Cornell University and a BA from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Counselor of Real Estate (CRE), a Certified Portfolio and Investment Manager (CPIM), a Chartered Management Analyst (CMA), and an ISO 9000 Certified Auditor. Dr. Lynn plays leadership roles in the industry’s major professional organizations including PREA, ULI, CRE, and ICSC.