Our team members come from a variety of backgrounds and bring diverse skill sets to every project. Our consultants have prior experience in the full range of real estate and investment: brokerage, acquisitions, development, finance, and urban planning. These combined backgrounds and experiences at our firm enable us to deliver solutions that are unsurpassed in the industry.
Joshua Kahr
Joshua Kahr is the founder and principal of the company. He is a nationally recognized expert in real estate market analysis, finance, and investment. His primary responsibilities include managing the operations of the firm, business development, and overseeing projects.
Consulting Experience
Since he launched his business in 2002, he has completed the following assignments:
- Constructed numerous financial models for a wide range of real estate investments including condominiums, rental apartments, office buildings, industrial parks, and shopping centers. The firm is now established as a “go to” firm for the audit and review of existing financial models. Examples include a $200,000,000 three phase, mixed use transit oriented development in Salt Lake City and a $1,000,000,000 project in Bethesda, Maryland.
- Developed leading workshops including “Advanced Pro-forma Modeling with Excel” and one for Argus, the dominant real estate financial package for real estate analysis. Outside of the manufacturer of Argus, we are the only company that provides regular courses nationwide. Clients include business schools (U. Chicago, Wharton, and Harvard), investment firms (Credit Suisse, Blackstone, and General Electric), industry organizations (Urban Land Institute), and conference organizers (Terrapinn Financial). He has personally delivered these seminars throughout the United States and in foreign location such as Tokyo, Dubai, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
- Ran over 30 two day seminars for United States Environmental Protection Agency and affiliated State agency employees on how government officials could better work with the private sector to help redevelop environmentally contaminated properties.
- Analyzed inequalities in the tax assessment system for New York City’s commercial real estate. It concluded that properties were under-assessed by approximately 40% relative to the City’s own published guidelines. This study received significant local press; it took up half a page on page 2 of the New York Post, New York City’s largest circulation daily, on 12/3/2004.
- Produced feasibility study for support of ongoing litigation on the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, NY.
- Created financial plan for the Port Authority of the City of Cleveland for the redevelopment of their port.
Investing Experience
He founded Metropolitan America, an investment company that is based in Northern New Jersey. He is also the founder of Essex Suites, a coworking business.
Academic Experience
He is on the faculty at Columbia University as an adjunct professor. He has taught real estate finance and real estate capital markets in Columbia University’s MS in Real Estate Development program since 2005. He has also taught graduate courses as an adjunct professor at Georgetown, Northwestern, Auburn University, New York University, and the City University of New York.
Publications
In addition to articles that have appeared in academic and business journals, he is the author of the textbook, Real Estate Market Valuation and Analysis (John Wiley and Sons: 2005). He also wrote a book on the state of the housing market, Beyond the Bubble (Amacom Books: 2007).
He has also been widely quoted on real estate finance, investment, and development in such national periodicals as The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor.
Education and Affiliations
He has a Master of Science in Real Estate from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Reed College. He was on the Board of Directors for Monmouth Real Estate Investment (NYSE: MNR), a publicly-traded Real Estate Investment Trust, for six years.
He is licensed as a Real Estate Broker and Real Estate Instructor in the State of New York.
SP Bourgeois
Mr. Bourgeois brings more than 15 years of experience working with clients to help to plan new real estate investments. He has most often worked as the key strategist and new venture organizer for private clients, investment arms of governments, and family offices, mostly in emerging markets, but also in the US and Europe. Have participated in new investment plans that total more than $10B USD and include projects as large as new cities and large area developments. His preference is to use a client’s current assets as the foundation for creating profitable business opportunities.
He has degrees from Hampden-Sydney College, Harvard University and American University, and has worked in a number of countries abroad.
Michael Stratta
Mr. Stratta brings over 15 years’ experience across a valuable spectrum of real estate-related roles and an array of responsibilities, such as investment underwriting, asset management, transaction analysis, capital markets advisory, third-party valuation, and general consulting. Mike has experience working with well-established real estate private equity managers, and working for sophisticated, active pension fund investors. Supplementing his experience with owner/operators and institutional investors, Mike has advised investment managers, developers, family office investors, software as a service (SaaS) providers, government entities, and management consultancies. Most recently, Mr. Stratta held full-time and contract roles with several proptech startups, including two that were subsequently acquired. Mike holds a BBA with honors from the University of San Diego.
Genevieve Francois
Ms. Francois has over 10 years of experience in commercial real estate and specializes in financial feasibility and due diligence analysis. Ms. Francois has created financial models for valuation of ground-up developments, cash flows, acquisitions, early lease terminations, lease renewals, buyouts, sublease recoveries, and blend/extend transactions for use in assigning value to real estate assets. She has provided consulting services including cash flow projections, rent projections, incentive advisory, geographical studies, highest and best use studies and portfolio strategy/optimization for numerous assets and corporations in the New York Metro area.
Prior to joining Kahr Real Estate Services, Ms. Francois was a Senior Associate at Pembrook Multifamily Capital, where she was responsible for sourcing transactions, providing financial valuations and performing due diligence. There she gained experience in screening, originating, underwriting, and executing on the provision of tax-exempt bond financing for low income housing tax credit (“LIHTC”) and other income restricted multi-family developments.
Prior to Pembrook, Ms. Francois was a Senior Financial Analyst and Leasing Associate for Jones Lang LaSalle in New York City. In that capacity, Ms. Francois provided analytic and leasing support for the transactions, corporate solutions, facilities management and strategic consulting groups. Ms. Francois holds a Master of Science degree in Real Estate Development from Columbia University and received a Bachelors of Business Administration degree with a concentration in Finance from Loyola University in Maryland where she was a member of the Loyola University Honors Program.