Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
Today’s podcast dives into the world of real estate with one of the industry’s largest managers and investors in industrial real estate.
We sat down in Franklin Templeton’s New York City office with real estate veteran
Josh Pristaw, Managing Director, President of
Clarion Partners, a $73.3B AUM real estate investment firm within Franklin Templeton’s alternatives platform.
Josh discussed data and durable demographics, which are drivers of the deeply researched investment process that his team at Clarion employs to invest in industrial real estate.
Josh’s background, which spans developing shopping centers to investing in real estate in Brazil to running one of the industry’s leading single-family rental investing platforms at Pretium, has helped him lead Clarion, one of the industry’s largest industrial real estate investment platforms.
Josh and I had a fascinating conversation, connecting data and demographics to actionable insights in real estate investing. We covered:
- The durable demographic and secular trends driving Clarion’s investment strategy in healthcare real estate.
- How 10,000 people turning 80 years old in the US daily is creating an “aging in place” dynamic that is impacting housing supply and self-storage demand.
- Why industrial demand is tied to e-commerce growth.
- How Clarion takes a quantitative approach to real estate investing, evaluating sub-markets using recursive factor analysis.
- How diversification and liquidity drive Clarion’s open-ended fund strategy, with 95% of the firm’s $73.3B in AUM residing in open-ended funds.
- Why data centers pose liquidity, capex, valuation, and concentration challenges for open-ended fund vehicles.
Bio
Josh Pristaw, equity owner and Managing Director, is President of Clarion Partners. He is a member of the Firm’s Executive Board, Investment Committee, and the Board of Directors for Clarion Partners Holdings, LLC. He joins Clarion from Pretium, where he served as Senior Managing Director and Head of Pretium’s real estate platform. Prior to Pretium, Josh co-founded GTIS Partners.
He has more than two decades of real estate experience across property sectors and functions, including acquisitions, asset management, portfolio development, and capital markets. He joined Clarion Partners in 2025 and has been working in the industry since 1997. Josh graduated from Dartmouth College, B.A. (1997).
Thanks, Josh, for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about real estate investing and your data-driven approach to the asset class.
Show Notes00:00 Introduction
01:14 Message from Ultimus Fund Solutions, Our Sponsor
02:44 Josh Career Origins
03:55 Real Estate Scale Shifts
04:51 Understand Demographics and Mega Trends
05:35 Senior Housing Supply Gap
07:12 Housing Turnover and Storage
08:24 Data Models Across Sectors
09:21 Data Driven Allocation Lens
09:57 Four Drivers of Returns
12:16 Timing Bets and Liquidity
15:17 Lessons Learned From Building In Brazil
18:06 Invitation Homes Data Ops
19:44 Clarion Data Science Edge
21:06 Quant Meets Relationships
22:11 Asset Class Specialists
23:16 Industrial Demand Megatrends
23:32 Ecommerce Trillion Wave
24:16 Efficiency And Taller Warehouses
4:58 Robotics Power Premium
26:54 Infrastructure Constraints
29:44 Why Not Data Centers
34:27 Supply Glut More Sellers
33:10 Liquidity Supply Imbalance
36:12 Evergreen Fund Playbook
39:26 Portfolio Rotation Discipline
41:16 Career Advice and Wrap Up
A Word from Our Sponsor, UltimusThis episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by
Ultimus, the full-service fund administrator and transfer agent powering asset managers in private and public markets. As alts go mainstream, you need real expertise to handle complex fund structures, connect with key distribution partners, and handle sophisticated compliance, reporting, and transparency demands.
That’s Ultimus: high-tech, high-touch solutions for over 450 clients and 2,500 funds with $775B in assets under administration. Backed by an expert team of over 1,200 employees, they place client service at the core of their business, helping you navigate complexity during your fund structuring or launch and then supporting you through every stage of growth. Whether you’re already in the market or thinking about entering private wealth, you can trust their team’s deep expertise in retail alternatives to help you reach your goals.
We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.
What is Alt Goes Mainstream: The Latest on Alternative Investments, WealthTech, & Private Markets?
Alt Goes Mainstream podcast is the place to turn to for interviews with some of the brightest and most experienced minds in the world at the intersection private markets and wealth management. AGM dives into investment strategies like private equity (PE), private credit, venture capital (VC), secondaries, GP stakes, infrastructure, real estate, wealth management, and comprehensively covers tools and frameworks for approaching private markets, such as asset allocation, evergreen funds, model portfolios, and more. For anyone looking to invest into private markets (from experienced wealth managers to family offices to the individual investor looking for a more diversified investment portfolio), you’ll hear inside stories from executives and founders at some of the world’s largest financial institutions, alternative asset managers firms, and wealth management firms. More than a personal finance podcast, Alt Goes Mainstream dives deep into trends, investment strategies, firm building lessons, and innovative technologies that are enabling investors to access private markets.