Danny Fishman of GAIA Real Estate | GAIA’s Multifamily Strategy in America’s Sun Belt
Courtesy of GAIA Real Estate
Investing in in Nashville's Germantown
Danny Fishman co-founded GAIA Real Estate in 2009 when the financial crisis created distressed opportunities across multifamily markets. His approach centers on hands-on management rather than passive ownership. When evaluating properties, Danny and his team spend weekends on-site observing tenant behavior, testing neighborhood walkability, and understanding what drives the local rental market. This boots-on-the-ground mentality led to their biggest early win: winning the bid for a 10,000-unit Lehman Brothers portfolio in bankruptcy court.
The Carillon in Nashville's Germantown neighborhood demonstrates how GAIA converts distress into value through operator-led repositioning. Rather than installing trendy amenities, they studied actual tenant needs at the 300-unit property. They discovered 70% of residents had dogs, but lacked quality outdoor space, and remote workers were competing for the conference room space while the gaming room sat empty. The solution was simple: convert unused rooftop parking into a dog park and replace the gaming room to a co-working hub. This tenant-focused strategy helped the property consistently outperform projections.
Danny's investment philosophy challenges conventional underwriting. When other investors were modeling aggressive rent growth in 2021, GAIA sold their entire 20,000-unit portfolio because the math didn't work. Now, with interest rates dropping from 6.5% to around 5% and distress returning to the Sun Belt, Danny sees opportunity in South Florida neighborhoods where hands-on property developers can drive transformation through targeted volume acquisitions.
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“We’re always trying to see what our clients need, not what we think in the tower on the 50th floor in Manhattan that an Excel sheet says they need. ”
About Danny Fishman
Courtesy of GAIA Real Estate
Danny has more than 25 years of extensive international experience in real estate investment, private equity, venture capital, investment banking and asset management. Danny co-founded GAIA in 2009. He previously founded and was Co-CEO of Tamir Fishman, an investment bank with billions of dollars in assets under management. He has held board positions with numerous government housing, development, and real estate investment companies and is the former co-head of the Israeli government’s privatization sector.
Danny earned a B.Sc. in Economics and an M.B.A. in Finance and Accounting from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Courtesy of GAIA Real Estate
Courtesy of GAIA Real Estate
Episode Timestamps
(04:53) Lessons learned from the New York market and expanding into Sun Belt multifamily
(09:36) Why treating real estate as a consumer product shapes every investment decision
(11:10) Discovering Nashville's Germantown neighborhood
(13:22) The Carillon acquisition strategy and initial value-creation opportunities
(19:54) Performance results and the decision to hold through market volatility
(26:03) Red tape and regulatory challenges that make Northeast investing difficult
(34:03) Opportunities in 2026 as oversupply gets absorbed and financing improves
Courtesy of GAIA Real Estate
About your host:
Atif Qadir is a licensed architect and entrepreneur, interested in solving big problems through innovation and technology. He has founded two proptech companies and a real estate development firm, building products ranging from software to workforce housing.
His work has been covered by Technology Review, The Real Deal, Commercial Observer, and Propmodo. He’s also a frequent speaker on the future of buildings and cities on popular industry podcasts and at conferences, including this past year at the Commercial Observer National DEI Conference, Yale AREA Conference, Columbia Real Estate Symposium, Open Data Week NYC and Austin Design Week.
About Michael Graves
The world-famous design firm Michael Graves is also a founding sponsor of American Building. Its namesake, the iconoclastic designer Michael Graves, FAIA was a fierce advocate for people-centric design. His work defines a generation of American architecture and includes the Portland Building, the Humana Building and the Denver Public Library. The 1st season of American Building was filmed live at The Warehouse, his historic home in Princeton, New Jersey:
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