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Fifteen years after its debut, Denver-based BMC Investments is making a pivot that shifts the focus of one of the area’s busiest locally based developers to solely owning and building multifamily properties.
Although 80% of its portfolio is multifamily, the company is known for its higher-end mixed-use office and hotel properties, particularly in the booming Cherry Creek neighborhood. But macro changes for offices and hotels have motivated BMC to narrow its focus specifically to housing.
“We made a decision as a company to be super focused on being a multifamily investor and developer,” BMC CEO Matt Joblon said. “We loved building hotels, but in terms of how we scale our business, we are trying to be great at just one thing: building and buying multifamily across the United States.”
The company has some mixed-use work ongoing on Cherry Creek that it intends to complete, but in the long run, apartments will be the firm’s focus.
Since its founding in 2011, BMC’s portfolio has always primarily included multifamily and housing, but the decision to lean into residential units comes as the multifamily market faces oversupply and maturing debt across the nation.
“Multifamily values have gone down drastically over the last four years for everyone in the United States,” Joblon said, adding that interest rates and an increase in new supply are raising concessions and lowering rents. “At the same time, expenses have consistently been going up: property taxes, insurance, utilities, labor. As a result of these headwinds, multifamily has been challenged since the end of 2022, beginning of 2023 from a value standpoint.”
But Joblon and his team see value in multifamily. BMC has invested about $1.4B across multifamily since its founding. Those investments have resulted in $3.8B in total capitalization, according to BMC’s website.
“Since inception, the returns have been incredibly attractive,” Joblon said.
But over the last four years, the properties BMC owns or has developed “have not performed as well as the deals that we did in the first 10 years of our existence.”
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Since the pandemic, the office market has become more challenging than multifamily, Joblon said. Hotels have also faced their own set of challenges since the pandemic, with occupancy numbers remaining depressed in most markets.
Focusing on multifamily also comes down to risk and reward. Hotels have higher returns than multifamily, but the risk is greater with hotels because hotels are an operating business that relies on visitors, Joblon said.
“In down markets, returns have typically been better in multifamily,” he added.
BMC is also dropping hotels because the company isn’t a hotel operator. When a third-party operating company is involved, it adds a layer of complexity and risk, Joblon said.
“Real estate’s becoming so much more efficient, more people in the business, more capital chasing it, and now with AI leveling the playing field from a data and information standpoint, it’s become [even] more efficient, more commoditized, and we feel that you have to be a hands-on, vertically integrated, specialized sharpshooter in what you do,” Joblon said. “You have to do one thing to become the absolute best at that one thing.”
When Joblon co-founded BMC with Jarrett Posner, they spent the first two years buying and fixing up 1970s- and 1980s-era multifamily properties, specifically on the lower end of Class-B and C.
Now, BMC is getting back to its roots.
“Housing is an essential need. It’s never going away,” Joblon said.
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BMC raised a $150M fund last year to purchase distressed apartment properties. It has made some purchases, including a $37M acquisition in Florida.
The company is also partnering with Mile High Development to convert a 12-story office tower at 910 16th St. in downtown Denver into 120 affordable housing units. The University Building conversion project is expected to cost $73M, Bisnow previously reported. It received a $14.7M Downtown Development Authority loan for the conversion project in October.
BMC is redeveloping Cherry Creek’s former Sears and Crate & Barrel buildings, too. The first phase is a 5-acre mixed-use development called Cherry Lane that includes 379 units, about 60K SF of office, nearly 133K SF of retail and more than 1,000 parking spaces. Construction began in 2025, with the first phase expected to deliver next fall.
BMC has developed five office buildings in Cherry Creek, all of which have been fully preleased, Joblon said, including Milwaukee Place at 242 Milwaukee St. and 255 Fillmore St., which sold for $92.5M this year.
Although the company won’t be building hotels again, it still has three other projects in Cherry Creek underway. It will likely develop three more projects in the neighborhood on land BMC owns, Joblon said.
“When it makes sense, we’ll do it,” Joblon said, adding that BMC has about five years left of work in Cherry Creek. “We’re known for the work we have done in Cherry Creek. However, you can’t build an enduring and scalable organization just around developing in Cherry Creek.”
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