This High-Powered Real-Estate Fund Is Run by College Students

On a recent summer Sunday afternoon, Brooks Hiller was hunkered over his laptop at his apartment in Chicago, dialing in to hour three of a marathon series of conference calls on real-estate deals.

The 21-year-old isn’t a professional, and he doesn’t make a dime from this work. He is a rising senior at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, where he leads a team of 20 undergraduates who manage about $12 million in equity.

Those students operate their own real-estate investment business, called Sample Gates Management, named for the Gothic-style limestone arches that are the gateway to the Bloomington campus.

Unlike the many student investment clubs that deploy university money or rely on donations, the Indiana group raises funds from third parties and invests in properties across the country, such as apartment developments and industrial parks.

As a high schooler, Hiller was so enamored with the program—by most accounts, the undergraduate-run real-estate investment group that manages the most capital—that he chose to attend Indiana with hopes of being a part of it.

Brooks Hiller with his parents Jeff and Heather Hiller at the Sample Gates on Indiana University Bloomington's campus. — Brooks Hiller, with his parents Jeff and Heather Hiller, at Indiana University’s Sample Gates in Bloomington in 2023.

“Students get the experience, the school gets a better education for their students, and the investors are making their money back and get to be a part of the program again,” Hiller said. “I really wanted to be part of that.”

The group’s success is emblematic of changes transforming both higher education and the real-estate industry.

An industry that once revolved around information shared at private clubs or events has become a highly digitized landscape. It’s now flooded with standardized public-market data, so much so that undergraduates can readily peer inside and participate on nearly equal footing.

Meanwhile, colleges in recent decades have championed what is called “experiential learning,” encouraging students to do the hands-on work that will teach them the practical job skills they can’t learn in traditional classroom settings. Plus, dozens of universities now offer real-estate degrees, minors or concentrations for undergraduates.

“At its core, this program wouldn’t have existed 30 years ago,” said Harvard University real-estate professor Avis Devine.

This summer, Sample Gates Management sold its first investment, an industrial warehouse development in Indianapolis. In about 16 months, the fund earned a 65% gross profit on that property.

“That’s a really fantastic return in this environment,” one that would be “good for sort of any professional firm, not just students,” said Tim Morris, a member of the board responsible for approving the students’ investments, who is a founder and co-managing partner of the real-estate firm Proprium Capital Partners.

That property was an “easy yes” investment, Tom Peck, the students’ faculty adviser, recalled. It would diversify the group’s investment portfolio, and a reliable tenant was committed to leasing the building once it was finished, Peck said.

Most of the fund remains tied up in investments, making it difficult to gauge exactly how well it is performing overall.

Aerial view of a large industrial warehouse building under construction with dirt lots and a few trucks. — Sample Gates Management sold its first investment property, an Indianapolis warehouse development, this summer. Gershman Partners/Citimark

A decade ago, there were only a few student-managed real-estate funds in the country. Today, there are at least 18, and two more are set to launch this school year, according to Mariya Letdin, a real-estate professor at Florida State University who has researched student-managed investment funds and advises one herself.

And yet, although a program like Sample Gates is an attractive resume line that provides unique experience among undergraduates, it isn’t necessarily a launching pad to help students secure jobs. Because of Wall Street’s summer-internship pipelines and early recruiting timelines, many of the 20 seniors in the group have already secured full-time jobs at global giants before they even touch Sample Gates funds.

In fact, the students’ professional experience—some of them participate in internships all three summers of college—is often a boon for Sample Gates. Students’ stints at institutional shops have left them with a “networking mindset” that “snowballs very quickly into a really, really good Rolodex,” Morris said.

At the Kelley School, where currently 278 students are majoring in real estate, faculty picked only 20 to manage the private-equity fund. The rising seniors were selected from Kelley’s already competitive roughly 60-student commercial real-estate workshop, in which students analyze deals and pitch them to mock committees.

In 2022, for the group’s first round of fundraising, Sample Gates raised $4.2 million from 46 investors, 40% more than their goal of $3 million. Last year’s cohort raised $7.8 million from 74 investors in the second round of fundraising, with one investor forking over $700,000. Some investors put money into both funds.

Construction site with two workers walking past new buildings. — The construction site of another project that Sample Gates Management invested in. Thanasi Georgiadis

Many of the investors are Indiana alumni now working in the real-estate industry themselves. They expect the students to return a profit, but they are also enthusiastic about fostering the young program and meeting standout students.

The student managers screen between three and eight deals each week, which could mean they evaluate up to 400 potential investments a year. However, between 2023 and 2025, they selected only 12 investments, ranging in location from Indiana to Arizona.

Once a potential investment passes an initial screening, a team builds financial models and meets with prospective partners to pressure-test the viability of a deal.

For students to move forward with an investment, they must present it to their investment committee, a board of 10 seasoned real-estate executives. The committee has to sign off on all deals, and they reject roughly a third of the ones the undergraduates bring to the table.

And if the students think they can pitch an investment without getting their eyes on the physical property—regardless of where it is located— they would best think again.

Some observers predict that students might be disappointed when they start their full-time jobs because of the shift from doing the highest-level work of managing a fund to being a lowly analyst at a large firm.

“To have all of these skill sets in a short period of time and then to go be an associate for Blackstone would be mentally defeating,” said Rhett Trees, an investor in Sample Gates and Indiana alum who is the chief executive of a Denver-based real-estate private-equity firm.

There is a fundamental advantage in being able to walk through a newly built penthouse before deciding to buy it.

The purchaser can see how northern light moves through the living room, judge whether the terrace is large enough for entertaining and understand the real relationship between the interiors and the view. The quality of the stone, joinery and finishes no longer needs to be imagined from a sample board.

That certainty forms an important part of the appeal at Park Residences in Cremorne, where Lower North Shore specialist Abadeen has released the completed whole-floor penthouse for sale by expressions of interest.

Occupying the building’s uppermost level, the residence spans 295sqm on title, including a 74sqm wraparound terrace. It has three bedrooms plus a study, 2.5 bathrooms and private lift access, with its principal rooms oriented north towards the leafy surrounds of Cremorne and Middle Harbour.

The scale is intended to feel closer to a freestanding home than a conventional apartment. It is also the crowning residence in a completed collection of just 11 homes, giving the building a degree of privacy increasingly difficult to find in larger residential developments.

A penthouse designed from the inside out

The penthouse is the product of a collaboration between Abadeen founder and executive chairman Justin Brown and designer and curator Jack Freeman, founder of FREEMAN & CO.

Their brief extended beyond specifying premium finishes. The intention was to create an established private residence — a home with warmth, art and individual pieces — rather than an immaculate but impersonal display apartment.

“The experience begins the moment the lift doors open,” Brown says.

“You’re welcomed into an elegant dining room before the home opens into an extraordinary living space framed by sun-drenched harbour views.”

Brown says that when someone walks through the front door, they pause.

“It’s not just the view, it’s the incredible sense of space, the warmth created by the northern sunlight that fills the interiors, and the way every room connects so effortlessly. It has all the proportions of a luxury home, while delivering the effortless lifestyle and personalised experience of living in a world-class six-star hotel, combined with the simplicity and convenience of apartment living.”

Freeman’s approach is based on the idea of collecting rather than decorating. Furniture, lighting and art are selected for their form, provenance and relationship to the architecture, producing an interior that appears to have developed over time.

At Park Residences, the curation includes furniture by Parisian design house Pierre Augustin Rose and the sculptural Ball and Shade pendant by London studio Square in Circle.

These international pieces sit within an architectural framework of oak flooring, marble surfaces, full-height glazing, integrated joinery and a feature fireplace.

The result is restrained but not anonymous. Curved and sculptural furniture softens the apartment’s clean architectural lines, while art and distinctive lighting introduce points of personality. Natural stone and timber give the rooms a tactile quality that is intended to age more gracefully than a heavily trend-driven palette.

Northern light as an architectural material

The penthouse’s north-facing orientation is central to the experience.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing brings daylight deep into the principal living spaces and frames a view across the surrounding treetops towards Middle Harbour. Instead of the harder glare and heat that can accompany a western outlook, the northern aspect provides more consistent light through the day.

That light also changes the character of the materials. Marble, timber, upholstery and metalwork become more expressive as shadows move across their surfaces.

The main living and entertaining spaces connect directly with the wraparound terrace, extending the usable footprint of the home and giving different parts of the interior access to the outlook.

At 74sqm, the terrace is conceived as a genuine outdoor living area rather than a narrow apartment balcony. It provides space for dining, informal seating and entertaining while preserving the elevated perspective over Cremorne’s greenery.

The fireplace gives the living room a counterpoint during cooler months, helping the large, glazed space retain warmth and intimacy after dark.

The appeal of a whole-floor residence

A penthouse occupying an entire level offers more than additional floor area.

It can provide separation from neighbouring apartments, greater control over orientation and windows on multiple sides of the building. Private lift access also creates a more deliberate sense of arrival and removes the usual transition through shared residential corridors.

At Park Residences, those attributes are combined with a boutique building of only 11 residences.

The comparatively small number of homes should appeal to buyers moving from substantial houses who want less maintenance without accepting the density or anonymity of a large apartment tower.

That downsizer market has become an important audience for luxury developments across Sydney’s established suburbs. Many buyers are not necessarily seeking smaller living spaces; they want to relinquish gardens, external maintenance and ageing houses while retaining room for family, guests, work and entertaining.

The Park Residences penthouse responds to that expectation with three bedrooms, a separate study, generous living areas and an outdoor space large enough to function as another room.

Cremorne beyond the harbour view

The penthouse is positioned at 2 Sutherland Street, opposite Cammeray Golf Club and close to Cammeray Croquet Club and Grand Slam Tennis Cammeray.

Neutral Bay Village, its cafés, restaurants and shops are approximately 650 metres away, according to Abadeen’s campaign material. The Oaks Hotel is also within walking distance, while the Sydney CBD remains readily accessible by road and public transport.

This combination of outlook and convenience is an important part of the proposition.

The residence is elevated above a green Middle Harbour landscape, but it is not isolated from everyday services. For an owner-occupier, the ability to walk to coffee, dining and shopping can matter as much as the panoramic view.

The advantage of buying completed

Off-the-plan purchasing necessarily involves interpretation. Buyers assess architectural drawings, renders, finish schedules and display suites before committing to a residence that may not be completed for several years.

A finished penthouse removes much of that abstraction.

Prospective buyers can test the privacy, sound, natural light, outlook and proportions themselves. They can also assess whether the interiors and furniture curation align with the way they want to live.

This is particularly relevant at the premium end of the market, where the emotional response to a residence can be as important as its specifications.

Park Residences is not selling the promise of what its penthouse may eventually become. The rooms, terrace, view and material detail are already there to be experienced.

The Penthouse at Park Residences is being offered for sale by expressions of interest through SRM Residential. Private inspections are available by appointment.

At a glance

Property: The Penthouse at Park Residences

Address: 2 Sutherland Street, Cremorne, NSW

Developer: Abadeen

Architecture: MHNDU

Interior curation: Jack Freeman and FREEMAN & CO

Building: Boutique collection of 11 completed residences

Title area: 295sqm

Terrace: 74sqm wraparound entertaining terrace

Accommodation: Three bedrooms plus study

Bathrooms: 2.5

Aspect: North-facing

Outlook: Across Cremorne’s leafy surrounds towards Middle Harbour

Access: Private lift entry

Selected design pieces: Pierre Augustin Rose furniture and the Ball and Shade pendant by Square in Circle

Sales method: Expressions of interest

Selling agency: SRM Residential

Project contact: 1800 700 880

This High-Powered Real-Estate Fund Is Run by College Students

The completed penthouse at Park Residences showcases a considered approach to luxury apartment living, combining northern light, curated interiors and the privacy of a whole-floor residence.