Greystar

Greystar is a leading, vertically integrated multifamily real estate company offering expertise in investment management, development, and property management of rental housing properties globally. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, with offices throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific, Greystar operates in over 150 markets globally and is the largest operator of apartments in the United States, managing over 435,000 units, with an aggregate estimated value of approximately $80 billion.

Greystar has a robust institutional investment management platform with over $26 billion in gross assets under management, including more than $11 billion of developments that have been completed or are underway.

At a large, global organization like Greystar, there are multiple groups responsible for fundraising, and coordinating activities between these groups is a challenge.

Greystar’s Investor Relations group has grown as they increased direct fundraising efforts for their larger investment funds, reducing the use of placement agents. Another team in the development group sources equity and debt financing for ground-up, development projects. They have averaged 24 new construction starts per year since 2012, and continue to be involved in projects even after the initial financing activity.

Investor and prospect contact data lived in multiple systems, which meant there was no comprehensive view of fundraising communications. And Greystar fundraising professionals were constantly traveling, so they needed better mobile access to up to date information. They wanted a single source of truth, a system that could work for a geographically dispersed team and scale with the business.

Jake Roland, Project Finance Associate at Greystar, said, “It was a eureka moment to realize that different parts of Greystar were reaching out to the same parties. We were well organized as a team, but needed better coordination across multiple groups.”

The fundraising teams at Greystar understood their requirements for a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that could assist them both inter- and intra-departmentally. They needed a fast implementation time, an intuitive, easy-to-learn interface, seamless access via any device from any location, and a platform that could expand to meet future needs around other key business processes.

Some of the Investor Relations team members had used a large enterprise, general purpose CRM system in the past. They quickly ruled it out for Greystar, as it required too much business-specific configuration, was difficult to use, and had minimal adoption at their previous companies.

“Greystar is a ‘there’s a better way to do this’ kind of place. When we saw Juniper Square, it was clear the software would easily meet all of our needs,” said Roland. “The system was intuitive, the CRM functionality clearly reflected an understanding of real estate, and the investment accounting and investor portal features were compelling for the future.”

Adam Pillay, Senior Managing Director and leader of the global Investor Relations team, added, “I wanted a single view of all the fundraising activities of my team. We’re in markets all over the world running multiple projects, so the flexibility of Juniper Square was exactly what we needed.”

Juniper Square has powered the seamless communication desired by these teams at Greystar. They interact with the system daily, tracking prospects, logging call notes and segmenting contacts to create target lists for specific offerings.

Caitlin Russell, Director of Investor Relations, noted, “It used to be very difficult to get knowledge of our investor relationships, as often that information was sitting with a placement agent, or in a Greystar executive’s inbox. With Juniper Square, we have a centralized system to ensure we’re always well informed and coordinated across all fundraising communications.”

Roland added, “The Project Finance team is growing, and Juniper Square allows us to be better prepared across all the markets served by Greystar. And I feel more in sync with Investor Relations, as I’m able to see their activity with the investors we’re both calling on.”

Pillay credits Juniper Square with increasing the productivity of his team, and praised the speed of implementation. “The ability to get our data into the system, and to train our employees all over the globe, was fantastic, and indicative of the high level of service Juniper Square has continued to provide us.”

Metrics as of 5/1/2022