Jared Hutter on the Future of Student Housing and Real Estate Development

0:00Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres and if you'd like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters.com and click on be our guest to apply. All right, so today we have Jared Hunter on the show and he's chief snowshuffler over at aptitude development and this episode is part of our eye connections series where we bring the best of those that attended and participated in eye connections in Miami. And Jared, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Adam. All right, so first things first here, I want to get into aptitude development of course and I got to know where that chief snowshuggler comes from that title. I love it. But before we get into all of that, I want to talk a little bit about eye connections in your experience in Miami. Have you been part of your organization or have you attended in the past this your first time? Like give us some of the backstory. Of course, this was my first trip to Miami for the conference, but I went to Singapore last year and I guess November of 2025 and a really great experience, right?

1:00Like I think it's what they do where I think what Ron has put together, there was a really fascinating platform to bring and capital together along with those who want to allocate it. So it's been a really good, good experience so far. I think the platform that they have online is phenomenal and got me to go to Singapore, right? Now in the end of itself, we're certainly a lot of fun. I've got to go to Asia, meet a whole bunch of interesting family offices. I think those relationships are obviously going to take a bit of a long time to curate, but I kind of start that at some point and then Miami was a whole other experience, right? Miami has some incredible speakers that were going through, I think the chance to meet a lot of really interesting people, but something that really took the heart and was good for them to do and hopefully get a chance to go back again. What keeps you coming back? I mean, obviously, you've been in this business for a while and a lot of different ways you could spend your time, I'm always curious when something sticks, but obviously you went to Singapore the first time that Miami, what keeps you coming back? What makes this different or unique or special? I think it's two things. I think it's an expensive ticket, right?

2:01That also leads out a lot of people by having you go there knowing the meetings you're going to have, right? So many conferences you go and like, all right, what am I going to have outside of this? I'm going to hang out at the bar, I'm going to try and go to some dinners and meet people. I think the way that I connections have set up their platform is really, really phenomenal because you know ahead of time, you get matched with people, you know, for a couple of weeks ahead of time, you get to reach out, you get to understand what their invested profiles are. You know, what it really does is it's a great use of time because going into these meetings, what they're looking for, they know what you're pitching and look, certainly you can talk about a lot of different things and sometimes meetings get set up and it's not always going to be a fit, but I think that the conversations that you end up having given the way the platform is set up is very beneficial and becomes a pretty good use of time. Now look at being said, I hope something sticks with one of these people without that. I don't know if it makes sense to spend the dollars because it is an expensive ticket,

3:03but if I get one investor, I would come back again. Yeah, game on aptitude development, first off, teeth no shoveler, like talk about business, like tell me a little bit more about the company. Sure. We've vertically integrated student housing development firm based in Northern New Jersey, but we build across the country. So we're a national real estate developer. Our focus is on student housing and we build ground up projects, our typical projects range anywhere from four to 700 beds. We've done a little bit smaller, we've done a little bit bigger, but I think our sweet spot right now moves forward. As you're doing that, like four to 700 bed range, focus moving forward is really on the large state public schools. I think, and we're not alone in that. I think the vast majority of the student housing development world, that's where everyone wants to be. Reason being, that's where the outside is, bro, should be, right? People talk a lot about the value of education and the delivery of education changing. My big thing is that you can't replicate the college experience from your parents' basement.

4:07So I don't think that the college experience is going to go away, is it going to change a little bit? Everything changes, right? Time changes, everything. I think AI is going to change a lot of this. Technology is going to change all of this in terms of how education is ultimately delivered and the experience is going to change a little bit, but the experience itself is never going to go away. In my opinion, I think that transition time, when you go away in your 18, you have four or five, hopefully six years away, but to kind of, before you jump into the workforce, and that kind of period, I think, is really valuable in people's lives. You know, that's kind of where we're solving for right now, is that time period? And when you think about where people are going to spend that time, you start having to think about the value proposition of education, right? So when you get into that, and you really get into that, certainly, I think that moving forward, a lot of that's going to be at the large state schools, because they're not as expensive as some other ones. Does that mean the large private schools, the $100,000 your schools are going to go away?

5:08I'm not going to short them, but it's not necessarily where I want to bet. I like the bet right now on the value proposition schools. How do you get involved in the pseudo-housing space? Why was that so attractive to you? Yeah, so I didn't come from a real estate background, I didn't know too much about real estate, but I started to get interested in it in college. And one of the things I always really liked was the idea of building something from nothing, right? I really liked the idea of constructing new buildings. And I saw student housing as really like an avenue that I could get into, and got excited about. When I was in college, the purpose of building housing didn't really exist, I was in Syracuse. But I started to see at some other universities where I had friends, these types of buildings coming up. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting. So I started to understand it, start to look into it. And as I got more interested in real estate, it was really just aggressively looking into this sector. And I was working for some other people for a handful of years, but I was always watching the student housing world on the side. I was reading the quarterly reports at the time.

6:09There was two public-a-trade companies. I was always reading their reports. I was always trying to educate myself on the metrics and what people were looking for. And where the industry was headed, because I saw it as something that was exciting, not overly crowded, and a place where, if I wanted to go build these developments from, I could really get in there and do that, right? There's a million guys who want to go develop in New York City. There's a million guys who can do that here. You want to go develop for New Jersey? Yeah, I mean, there's people who have been doing that for 50, 60 years, better access to capital, better access to deals, and I do. And I didn't want to compete with them. I wanted to get in somewhere and do something. I always say, I want to go do deals, no one just chase deals, I actually want to go do deals. So I want to do deals. You got to figure out where you can go do them. And that was how I came about with the student housing. Talk to me about the capital rate inside of this, and in the landscape in that niche on what you're seeing. What do you think? Yes, so the story that we've been, we've been a real syndicator of high net worth family office dollars. In the last 12 years, we've done about 13 deals, ground up development, built about

7:115,000 beds, about 750 million dollars of total capital deployed, and the billion dollars of development value. But in that, I would tell you that we've done, we've raised about 325 million dollars of equity in that time frame, but to do those deals. And I've really syndicated that out. I've taken everything from a 25,000 dollar check to a single check of 14 million. So we've done a little bit of everything over that time, and it's been an interesting ride, right? So syndicating it out of the retail network, I have that 650 unique investors through that network has been a really interesting and good experience, I'd say, given me the opportunity to learn some a lot of people, make a tremendous amount of connections. And when the institutions were climbing up a little bit over the last couple of years, the retail capital was the last ones to leave the party. The first side of that is, there are the last ones to come back to the party as well. So I think that side of the business has slowed down a little bit, along with the fact

8:14that we are getting bigger, right? We have more deals, we've really built a great organization, I've got a phenomenal team around me and our company, and we're finding more deals, deals are getting bigger. So if we want to just do one deal at a time, I would say we probably continue doing it the way we are. I think it's syndicated out, but I'm really now looking for much larger investors and some programmatic partners potentially to come in. And what I really like in a perfect world, I love a great family office, you know, loves the sector and wants to come kind of sell for some higher level returns from place. I don't mind playing with the coGP with somebody, right? You know, I think I've come to really understand over the last couple of years is, coGP made a million different things, right? And while I think we have good subject matter expertise right now, I think when people are talking coGP, which is the hot buzzwords these days, I'm just trying to sell for a higher return, right? And that I'm okay with. If people want to make more money, I'm happy to work harder for them to do that.

9:14I'm not looking for partners to come in and kind of run our business for us. I think that would not be the partners that we're looking for, but we're definitely looking for the white capital partners, and we can help us grow, or that we can make a money for. Yeah. It's great. It's a great story. I love it. And I also like to, and what's interesting to me is, as this space evolves, and as education as a whole evolves, and you mentioned it pretty optimistically, which is like the college experience isn't going the way like I have, I agree with you. Like I'm like people are, there's still going to be some form or some variation of the college experience. What it looks like, campuses, all of that will change, right? But as a whole, I agree, I completely agree with what you're talking about. So I'm interested to see as the campuses change, as the infrastructure changes, all of this, like how your space is affected, because ultimately, like that's going to change too. Like I remember going to college campus, I went to my own model a month, a ton of time a while ago, and I was like, what happened here? Like the housing, the this, the apartments, like the new bills, all that. I'm like, it's amazing.

10:14I wanted to go back, man. I'm a tell you. It's different. Obviously I agree with everything you just said, but I would tell you, you know what the right? The exciting part to me is, I think our industry of student housing is going to get to help shape what some of that looks like. Not necessarily because we want to, but I think as we, as our, exactly, right? Like it's just a natural thing as our industry continues to look at the amenities that are out there. That kids are wanting, right? Like this campus, like you have to have the amenities to come up and that's why I wanted to go back. I was like, man, somebody's amenities, I live in a luxury, I rise, and I'm like, just do that. I'll give you a crazy thought that somebody else is like, I can't take credit for this. I was sitting on a panel last year and a designer who I know made this comment. It kind of blew my mind, but he was right. And I really have some thinking about this the entire year. He's like, we're designing buildings for kids who are 14 years old today.

11:17It's like holy crap. Wow. Right? Like, what's that perspective? Right? Yeah. That's what this business is. And by the way, that's what this business has been for a long time. Yeah. I never thought about that until a year ago, this designer made that comment. So when you layer, layer that into the thinking, right? So now you've got to figure out what these kids are going to want. They're 14 years old today, right? Like how much is technology shifting? What kind of amenities do they want? So I think we're our industry of student housing is kind of on the forefront of a lot of this. The multifamily take a lot of cues from what we're doing. I think they're going to see the universities start to really look at what we're doing. How much we're going to influence a university's decision is shooting, right? I think the university should take a much broader view and should really be thinking, but I do believe the smartest and best universities out there from the experience perspective are going to really take a hard look at what the student housing guys are doing and understand

12:17the trends because we're really on the forefront of all this and that right, that aspect right there can be is one of the most exciting parts of this business. Yeah. Is that as exciting? I never thought about that. I blew my mind to what you just said. You're designing for 14 years. That's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. Jared, this has been a lot of fun having you on and getting the feel for what's going on in the industry and also your business. That being said, you mentioned looking for investors, family offices, looking for, you know, to partnerships potentially. How do people follow up? How do they connect? How do they learn about aptitude development? Absolutely. I mean, our website aptitudeare.com, you can always find us there, but I would tell you that the only social media active on these days is LinkedIn. Just trying to be pretty active on there, putting out a lot of good thoughts. So anyone who wants to find us would love to have a discussion. That's really the best place to connect with me. Fantastic. For everybody listening just so you know, we'll definitely put some links in the show notes so you can just click on the links and head right on over and speak into the audience. If this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven't done it yet, hit that subscribe

13:21or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day, we're bringing you new content, new ideas and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way of your journey as well. So hit that subscribe or follow button. Jared, man, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you very much. We'll talk soon. The Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are built to keep going, blending rugged muscle with precision engineering all supported by Toyota's time-tested legacy of dependability. Step into a Tundra and feel the unyielding capability with the available I Force Max engine Tundra puts out impressive power, torque and towing performance and the roomy high-tech cabin keeps you connected on the go. Or take a look at Tacoma made for drivers who push past the path, agile, tough and relentless with available features like crawl control, portable JBL speaker, a power lift gate, so gear goes in fast and the adventure keeps moving. The Tacoma and Tundra are engineered to endure season after season, mile after mile. So drive one home today, visit toyota.com or stop by your local Toyota dealer to find out more Toyota.

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