Purse joins Shelter Rock as senior advisor – Exclusive

The former co-head of Park Hill Real Estate is now working with the real estate and real assets capital advisory firm led by his former colleague, Walter Stackler.

Charles Purse (pictured) is back in the real estate placement business, coming out of retirement to work with New York-based advisory firm Shelter Rock Capital Advisors.

As senior advisor, Purse will focus on strategic initiatives as well as select advisory assignments, particularly with regards to pre-fundraising planning and product development. He is understood to have joined Shelter Rock in the past few weeks and will be based in New Hampshire.

The executive’s new role, which will call for him to work primarily with general partners, taps into a currently unmet need in the placement business. “Prefund advisory is an interesting category that really hasn’t been pursued, at least on the real estate side,” he told PERE.

Purse became one of the best-known names in the real estate placement business as co-head of Park Hill Real Estate, which he co-founded with Frank Schmitz in October 2005 through a joint venture with Blackstone. He worked at the firm for eight years before retiring, and subsequently was recruited for a potential capital raising project with Investors Diversified Realty, a Cleveland, Ohio-based real estate investment manager.

Before launching Park Hill Real Estate, Purse was a managing director of the real estate private fund group at Credit Suisse, where he worked with Shelter Rock managing partner Walter Stackler for six years. Prior to Credit Suisse, he held senior marketing positions at DRA Advisors and The Yarmouth Group.

Purse is the latest in a wave of new additions to the Shelter Rock team. In September, the firm also recruited Dominic Field, a former partner at Hodes Weill & Associates, to lead its new European operations. He will be based in London. Meanwhile, Thomas DeCoene also was tapped as a senior advisor to support capital raising efforts in Latin America. DeCoene, who joined the firm in August, previously was the chief executive of Itau USA Securities.

“We are hyper focused on building a differentiated real estate capital advisory firm that will earn a reputation as an industry thought leader,” Stackler said. “Essential to that goal is attracting creative industry leaders like my former colleagues Chuck and Dominic to the platform. We are also thrilled to have Thomas join us given his extensive experience in Latin America.”

Also in August, Shelter Rock hired Zoe Hughes as director of its new investor communications advisory business, which will be focused on improving communications between fund managers and investors, particularly after the completion of a fundraise. Hughes, who previously was editor and co-founder of PrivcapRE, a digital media platform focused on institutional real estate, and senior editor of PERE, will be based in New York.

Shelter Rock, which was founded by Stackler in 2014, recently acted as placement agent for JEN Partners’ JEN V, a residential land fund that attracted a total of $280 million, above its $250 million original target.