Prudent Growth Partners
At Prudent Growth Partners, we believe that building a diversified portfolio of commercial real estate is the best way to generate a consistent and growing income stream while also creating long-term wealth. We also believe that real estate is wonderfully inefficient for any number of reasons: the deals are too small, or the deals are too big, or financing is too difficult, or the location is not quite right, or the property needs work. We pursue properties that tend to be too big for smaller investors to pursue on their own, but also too small for larger institutions. This frequently means properties priced in the $3,000,000 to $10,000,000 range, and typically consists of multi-family apartment complexes and, neighborhood retail centers and small office buildings. We look for good value, strong cash flow, a well-managed property in a stable - or growing - demographic area. We see dozens of deals each month, but only anticipate acquiring 3 to 5 properties in any given year.
Thomas Hahn
PGP’s President is Tom Hahn, a successful entrepreneur, financier, and real estate operator with nearly 30 years of capital markets and real estate investing experience, including the active management of over five-dozen LLCs with holdings that consist of a neighborhood shopping centers, office and flex space, single-tenant retail properties, multi-family properties, and single family residential investment properties throughout the Midwest, Mid Atlantic and the Southeast. Tom founded PGP in 2015 primarily as a way to work with many friends, investors, and partners who were interested in building a diversified real estate portfolio with a goal of achieving strong cash flow and long-term equity growth. Prior to starting PGP, Tom co-founded Chapel Hill Brokers, an energy derivatives firm that was acquired by ICAP Energy, LLC, the world's largest energy derivatives firm. He played a leadership role in many strategic acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategy decisions for the firm while also managing the US power derivatives businesses. He spent his early career on Wall Street as an oil derivatives traders at a private fund and two different global investment banks. Tom is an expert in acquisitions and dispositions, deal structuring, negotiation, management, finance, and investor relations. As a long-term participant in the real estate and capital markets, he has navigated a variety of economic cycles and interest rate environments, including the “great recession” of 2008. Tom is an active angel and VC investor, with stakes in several startups, including Chapel Hill Broadband (exit in 2001), Bandwidth.com (which successfully completed an IPO in 2017), Republic Wireless, Renewable Choice Energy (acquired by Schneider Electric in 2016), and Wedpics (acquired in 2017). He is a member of the Triangle Angel Partners, an angel fund designed to assist and invest in startup companies in the Raleigh Durham area. Tom was a founding board member of DurhamCares and Samaritan Health Center, and he served as President of the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Triangle. He is currently a Trustee of Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill. He lives in Durham, NC with his wife, Jennifer, and their two sons.
Rainey Sellars
Rainey has 30 years in the institutional financial sector focusing on investor relations and deal distribution in the public and private markets including private equity, co-investments, real assets, venture, pre-IPO deals, hedge funds and global equities. Rainey has invested in real estate throughout his career including several properties with PGP. As a member of the team, he will focus on relationship management/investor relations, deal structuring and working with Tom on strategic initiatives and overall asset allocation. He is also a Senior Managing Director at Morgan Creek Capital Management in Chapel Hill focusing on the formation and distribution of private equity transactions. Previously, he was a Managing Director at Signet Management, a global fixed income boutique and also spent fifteen years at Merrill Lynch & Co., primarily based in New York, as a Managing Director in the Global Markets Institutional Group overseeing the Latin American emerging market sales unit. This team participated in more than $20 billion of equity financing deals and consistently held a top-ranking in the marketplace. Mr. Sellars received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Chemistry and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also received his MBA, with a Distinction in Finance, from The London Business School. He is a native of Greensboro, NC and has lived in Mexico, London, New York and Miami. He currently resides in Durham with his wife, Melissa and their three sons.
David Miller
David is a partner at Longleaf Law Partners (www.longleaflp.com) and has extensive experience with syndications, joint ventures, acquisitions, financing, leasing and dispositions of multifamily, office and retail real estate assets. As a member of PGP’s executive team, David is responsible for guiding PGP’s legal affairs, negotiating deal terms and contracts, ensuring legal compliance and managing risk exposure. In that role, he has also helped PGP create a platform for 1031 transactions involving sophisticated tenancy in common arrangements between PGP and other 1031 investors and complex debt and equity financing. Prior to joining Longleaf Law Partners (formerly Morris, Russell, Eagle & Worley, PLLC), David practiced in North Carolina for more than five years with a focus on real property, business and estate law. He has previously worked in the U.S House of Representatives, the White House and Yale Law School. David enjoys having the opportunity to steer clients through transactions with many moving parts and getting deals completed despite the inevitable challenges and problems that almost always arise. In his personal time, he has served as an elder at Church of the Good Shepherd in Durham, N.C., and volunteered with Justice Matters, Inc., a Durham-based nonprofit providing legal services to our vulnerable and marginalized neighbors.
Tim Oakley
Tim has over 25 years as an operating CFO in both public and private companies spanning many industries, including saas, enterprise software, internet, digital media & mobile communications. He has conducted $1 billion in financial transactions/exits, including three successes in the Triangle (Appia, iContact, and Opensite: each exceeding $100M exits) and Cherwell Software in Colorado, which recently closed on a $250M investment from KKR in 2018. Tim has been an investor in over a dozen deals in the real estate sector, including many with PGP. As a member of PGP’s executive team, he will support deal structuring, investor relations and financial management. Tim is also a principal in Thrivers LLC which provides personal and professional integrative mentoring to leaders. Thrivers partners with high growth startups in the Triangle like Teamworks, Strongkey and First Inc who collectively raised $30M 2018 as well as executives at multi-billion-dollar companies, such as Atlassian in Silicon Valley. In addition to his mentoring and advisory services with Thrivers, he also serves on multiple boards and provides clinical coaching at The Carolina Clinic Executive Wellness Center at UNC Hospital. Tim is a CPA, holds master’s degrees in both business and counseling and is certified through Duke University’s Center for Integrative Medicine. Tim attends Summit Church and leads 18-month personal mentoring groups for men as part of Radical Mentoring. He is a native of Durham where he resides with his wife Edie and their two sons.