50 Years of The Inland Real Estate Group
July 20, 2018 | Dawn Wotapka | REIT magazine
Back in 1968—when bell bottoms and the Beatles ruled—four teachers looking to supplement their modest salaries decided to try their hands at real estate. Five years later, they quit teaching to focus full-time on the firm now known as The Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, Inc.
This year, the Chicago-area based company celebrates its 50th anniversary. With more than 1,000 employees, Inland is now one of the nation’s largest commercial real estate and financial groups, having conducted more than $80 billion in transactions and acquired more than $45 billion in real estate. It has represented nearly 500,000 investors by sponsoring more than 700 investment programs. Across its portfolio, Inland has owned and managed several hundred million square feet of diversified commercial real estate in 49 states. The only state missing is Alaska, “but that’s not a conscious strategy,” Dan Goodwin, one of Inland’s four founders and current chairman and CEO, points out. “We like Alaska, we just haven’t found the right deal there.”
Most real estate companies are relatively simple, specializing in one type of real estate. Sure, they may dabble in something slightly related, but the model is straightforward. Not so with Inland. Over the course of the past five decades, the company has built single-family homes, managed thousands of apartments and syndicated investment products nationwide. It has managed office and retail properties—Inland was once Walmart’s largest landlord nationwide—formed a private capital corporation for 1031 exchanges, and formed eight public non-listed REITs (PNLRs) with a total value of more than $35 billion.
