Daniel Gorzawski, a former head of Europe at Harrison Street, has launched an alternative private equity pan-European real estate investment platform.
Targeting Life Sciences & Innovation and the Living sectors, Westwind Capital will focus on Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA), Build-to-Rent (BTR) residential, as well as Micro-Living and Co-Living.
Westwind Capital believes that these asset classes represent relatively immature and fragmented markets in Europe characterised by structural undersupply and underpinned by strong demographic growth drivers, such as urbanisation and societal changes which support long term and diverse occupancy.
It sees strong demand from institutional investors for high quality stabilised assets in these sectors and plans to adopt an aggregation strategy to capture operational and capital market efficiencies from building out portfolios.
Daniel Gorzawski, founding partner and CEO of Westwind Capital, commented: ‘While investor interest in specialist residential and, more recently, life sciences asset classes has grown considerably over the past few years, these sectors are still far from mature and benefit from the central theme of chronic undersupply. Furthermore, I believe the Living sectors are extremely well positioned to provide inflation-hedging qualities through strong demand-supply imbalances and shorter leases. From my conversations with investors over the past year, I am confident that there is clear demand for a new, nimble and expert investment platform that can provide them with access to these asset classes across Europe.’
Targeting mainly the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, and Germany, Westwind Capital will focus on direct investments through joint ventures with operating partners and developers, but will also consider debt and special situations.
It plans to embed ESG in the investment and asset management process with all potential transactions evaluated through a sustainability lens, while ongoing ESG opportunities will be factored into asset-level business plans.
Westwind Capital will seek to be a signatory to the UN PRI by implementing the 'Six Principles for Responsible Investing' and will benchmark and report progress across all ESG initiatives transparently.
Through Westwind Capital, Gorzawski plans to leverage his over 15 years of expertise in real estate investment and alternative real estate.
At Harrison Street, he oversaw the construction of a €3 bn portfolio that included over 16,000 student beds, 2,600 residential units and over 185,806 m2 of life sciences space across five countries.
Before joining Harrison Street, Gorzawski spent nine years at AIG Global Real Estate, including as a managing director.
