Thought Leader: Mahbod Mia

Mahbod Nia is Veris Residential’s Chief Executive Officer and has served as a member of the Board of Directors since June 2020. Under Mr. Nia’s leadership, Veris Residential has advanced its strategic transformation to become a pure-play multifamily REIT—simplifying and focusing its business, strengthening its balance sheet, and enhancing its operational platform in pursuit of the Company’s new strategic direction.

Mr. Nia has over 20 years of real estate industry experience across multifamily and office investment, management, financing and advisory roles. Throughout his career, he has held several leadership roles, successfully executing over $12 billion of multifamily transactions, and led company evolutions that resulted in substantial value creation for investors. Notable transactions include the restructuring of LEG Immobilien GmbH, a 91,000-unit multifamily company acquired by Goldman Sachs managed funds, with a focus on optimizing operations to maximize FFO in preparation for a public listing at a ~$6 billion valuation and the ~$6.7 billion financing of Viterra Gruppe and Deutsche Annington Immobilien’s merger, the largest transaction in German history at that time.

Before joining Veris Residential, Mr. Nia was CEO of NorthStar Realty Europe Corp. (NRE), a NYSE-listed REIT focused on European properties, where he served as a member of NRE’s investment committee and board of directors. During his tenure at NRE, Mr. Nia led the strategy transformation that drove per-share NAV growth of over 40% through a series of value-enhancing property-level and corporate initiatives. These initiatives included a major simplification of the business to focus on Class A office properties in large city centers, a reduction in leverage from 58% to 40% loan to value, significant G&A expense savings, and substantial leasing activity across the portfolio, which cultivated in the successful sale of NRE to AXA Investment Managers and the realization of a 16% IRR and 1.5x equity multiple for shareholders.

In parallel, he also served as Managing Director, Head of European Investments of NorthStar Asset Management Group (subsequently Colony Capital), where he worked to establish the company’s European investment platform, rapidly growing it to $2.6 billion in assets under management across nine countries and five asset classes before spinning the platform off to create NRE in 2015.