Chad Phillips was named global head of real estate for Nuveen in March, taking the helm of the third-largest institutional owner of private real estate in the world amid a moment of upheaval in the marketplace.
In the months since, he has steered the ship as though the choppy waters might never subside, honing in on real estate that can weather whatever storms come.
“I believe that volatility will continue,” he told Bisnow in a Zoom interview last week. “If it’s not this particular issue, it’ll be that particular issue. There’s always going to be something that crops up.”
Courtesy of Nuveen
Nuveen Global Head of Real Estate Chad Phillips
Nuveen, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America’s global investment management arm, has shifted its focus toward needs-based properties like grocery-anchored and healthcare retail, where consumers need to be rather than want to be.
Against the backdrop of economic uncertainty with fluctuating tariff policies and inflation pressure, the company raised $320M to buy necessity retail this spring and has another $500M in due diligence, Phillips said. Nuveen expects to buy close to $1B worth of convenience-oriented retail assets by the end of the year.
“My job is to basically train and condition our teams to be able to respond in uncertain times, so that’s the way that we’re focused,” Phillips said. “We say, ‘We can’t always predict the future, and how do we invest in real estate that’s going to be as resilient as possible?’”
Phillips was previously the global head of healthcare, office, retail and mixed-use for Nuveen before succeeding Chris McGibbon, who retired from the company after serving as its global head of real estate for six years and working with the firm for 25.
While the pair worked together for three months until June to ensure a smooth transition of leadership, the shift in mindset was almost immediate.
Nuveen’s prior focus was largely on multifamily investments, launching an affordable housing fund in 2023 with $250M in seed funding from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.
Now, grocery-anchored retail is stealing its spotlight. Last year, U.S. grocery-anchored retail had just a 3.5% vacancy rate, and rents rose 3.1% year-over-year, according to JLL.
For the first half of 2025, grocery visits grew by 1.7%, and that rose even faster in Sun Belt markets like Texas, where foot traffic to grocery-anchored centers rose 3.2%, according to Colliers.
Nuveen is targeting markets with above-average household incomes, a large share of college-educated residents and populations primarily between 25 and 39 years old, because those consumers are in better positions to handle GDP fluctuations and broader economic uncertainty, Phillips said.
“It’s something we don’t take lightly, and that’s why we do so much homework on the surrounding strength of the individual shoppers and the demographics,” he said.
Nuveen purchased five shopping centers totaling 600K SF with occupancy rates exceeding 98% in California earlier this year and tapped shopping center operator Vestar in June to manage the properties and handle leasing, according to a release.
The properties in San Marcos, La Quinta, Santa Clarita, Wildomar and Oceanside are leased to tenants like CVS, Sprouts Farmers Market and Target.
The company is still active in multifamily, targeting areas with tenants who earn 50% to 150% of the area median income, where rental housing is in high demand. In the industrial sector, the firm is focused on smaller facilities that support e-commerce and daily consumer needs, Phillips said.
“If cycles do change or if there is more volatility in the market, we want to make sure that we’re investing in real estate that we think is generally liquid across most cycles, and that often starts with having the right size deals,” Phillips said.
When Phillips first joined the company, he spent 2020 to 2023 solely in the office sector.
Phillips said in 2022 he was waiting for a price correction in the office market before jumping back into acquisition mode. Last week, he said that correction has come to fruition, but Nuveen still hasn’t made any offers, although it is kicking the tires in San Francisco and Sun Belt markets, he said.
At the beginning of the year, analysts at Nuveen Global Cities REIT wrote that values have stabilized and total returns have turned positive in most markets. They predicted that 2025 would be a good year for real estate investment.
With the end of the year fast approaching, Phillips said Nuveen has been acting accordingly, noting the company has already closed on about $1.4B worth of real estate acquisitions.
“I’m not saying that there’s huge appreciation for 2025,” he said. “I’m saying it’s a good vintage year to set the table, to plant the seeds and to harvest them later.”