Pretium taps GTIS co-founder to be co-head of real estate

Single-family rental specialist Pretium Partners has hired Josh Pristaw, a co-founder of GTIS Partners, to be its co-head of real estate, PERE has learned.

Pristaw, who will also hold the title of senior managing director at the New York-based asset manager, will work alongside Dana Hamilton, who has led Pretium’s real estate platform since 2017. Together, they will oversee Progress Residential, the firm’s 80,000-home SFR platform.

The co-head of real estate position was created to facilitate the rapid expansion of the Progress platform, Hamilton told PERE. Pretium had 55,000 homes and about $19 billion of total assets under management at the end of 2020. Its AUM is now $40 billion. The firm is also looking to fill several hundred other roles throughout the organization.

Pristaw was identified as a candidate for the role because of his experience building and leading teams, including GTIS’s Brazil operation as well as its capital markets team, Hamilton told PERE. She also cited his development experience and outside perspective as key attributes. The recruitment process spanned roughly a year.

GTIS’s SFR platform was another differentiator, Hamilton noted. The New York-based firm began purchasing homes out of foreclosure in 2012 and at one point owned or managed 4,700 properties. Pristaw was not directly involved with the SFR business but was familiar with it having been a member of the GTIS investment committee.

“There aren’t many leaders who know a lot about SFR, but Josh was part of an organization that was an early participant in this space, so he fully understands and appreciates both the challenges and also the opportunity for Pretium to create value here for our residents and our communities,” Hamilton said.

Pristaw told PERE he was drawn to Pretium because of its ability to effect change in the supply-constrained US housing market, both as an owner-operator of rental properties and as a lender to home buyers and corporate builders.

“It is a tremendous opportunity to bring private capital to bear to solve what is an acute and large housing shortage,” he said. “Since 2010, seven million more households have been created than homes constructed, so being able to tackle that problem from multiple angles, within an operating business, like Pretium, was really attractive to me.”

As co-head of Brazil, Pristaw oversaw acquisitions, asset management and portfolio management in the country. The firm had invested $2.4 billion in Brazil as of last December, making it one of the most active foreign investors in the South American market.

“I’m incredibly proud of what my partners and I built at GTIS,” Pristaw told PERE. “I was there for 17 years, I left on really great terms, and I see a really positive, bright future in what they’re doing. This just was a very attractive opportunity, something that I thought was right for me and my family.”

Under Pristaw’s leadership, GTIS’s Brazil platform earned accolades for its efforts to make assets environmentally friendly. Last year, its three opportunistic funds focused on the country were named the three most sustainable vehicles in South America by the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, or GRESB. Hamilton said she expects Pristaw to make environmental, social and governance issues a higher priority at Pretium.

“This is something that he cares about deeply, so we’re looking forward to Josh really being helpful on the ESG front,” she said. “We consider that an important part of how our business develops moving forward.”

Pretium has not yet decided how Hamilton and Pristaw will divide the leadership duties for the Progress platform. At least initially, the two will be “joined at the hip,” Hamilton said, adding that she hopes her new counterpart will be able to identify ways of optimizing the business.

For now, Pristaw said he is looking forward to being part of such a fast-growing platform.

“The boat is going in the right direction,” he told PERE. “I’m just excited to grab an oar and row as hard as I can in that direction with everybody else to hopefully help us get there a little bit faster.”