Harbor Group International, a Norfolk, Virginia-based real estate investor with $19B under management, has hired a chief investment officer charged with buying office buildings, the company announced Wednesday.

Mike Nathan, a veteran of New York City office REITs, has been hired in the firm's Midtown Manhattan office and will handle the firm's office investment platform, including direct equity and credit investments. Nathan joins from TKF Real Estate Investment, where he served as partner and managing principal.

He was previously at Paramount Group for four years, per his LinkedIn page, and spent nine years at SL Green working in acquisitions, structured finance and asset management.

“Mike’s diverse experience and deep knowledge in the office sector will allow us to expand and develop high-quality office investment strategies and scale our existing capabilities to meet investors’ needs in 2023 and beyond,” HGI President Richard Litton said in a statement. “He is a strong addition to our leadership group.”

Nathan said he is “thrilled” to be joining the company and is looking forward to finding new opportunities across the investment platform.

HGI owns 57,000 residential apartments in the United States and some 5M SF of commercial real estate space across the U.S. and United Kingdom, the company said. It made one of the biggest office buys in the city in the last year, paying $760M for 51 West 52nd St., known as Black Rock. The seller, ViacomCBS, had owned the property for 50 years, and had previously been seeking more than $1B for the property before pulling it from the market, per The Real Deal.

In October, Harbor also provided a $90M senior mezzanine loan for Extell Development’s medical office tower at 1520 First Ave. Last month, it paid an undisclosed price to TruAmerica Multifamily for a 464-unit apartment complex in Koreatown in Los Angeles. In the summer, it bought three multifamily complexes in Long Beach, California, paying 180M for 348 units.