About us
Where we come from.
Helix was founded in 2004. The people here have spent decades buying and operating real estate together, and through more than one full cycle.
The lineage
Most of us came up in one of Sam Zell’s organizations. That is where we learned to treat real estate as an operating business, to manage risk, to respect leverage rather than lean on it, and to make decisions based on the numbers instead of the story around them. It is the discipline this firm is built on.
We have spent a significant amount of time in manufactured housing, operating communities and learning the business at the level of the water line and the ground lease. We have run public companies and private portfolios, taken a public company private and operated it, and later stewarded a public office company through a deliberate, multi-year wind-down. We have bought, we have operated, we have sold, in good times and bad.
Our capital is our own, our timeline is our own, and we hold assets for as long as they earn their place. What has not changed since 2004 is the standard: buy at a basis that works, manage risks, own the asset actively, and spend our attention only where the work is worth it.
What we believe
Real estate is an operating business. We run it like one.
Operations create the return. The exit only confirms it.
We back the operator as much as we back the asset.
Tax strategy is part of the return. We plan it with the deal, not after it.
We hold as long as the asset earns its place.
The right hard deal beats an easy one that goes nowhere.