Philippe Lanier has been learning about the commercial real estate business since he was 12. Now 48, he’s just been appointed CEO of a Washington, D.C.-based real estate investment firm with $4 billion in assets under management.
Lanier recently took the reins of EastBanc from his father, Anthony Lanier, who founded the firm in 1987 and will stay in an active role as president, the company said.
“What makes this transition meaningful is that it’s not just my son taking over — it’s a team that understands our markets, our partners and our long-term investment philosophy."
The leadership transition, completing a succession plan years in the making, marks a new era for the global group that works across property types and has a heavy presence in D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. It also comes as institutional capital has remained somewhat hesitant to redeploy in the District as the market works to bounce back from the pandemic and lower commercial real estate price tags.
But, the younger Lanier sees opportunity.
“Our strategy is to take advantage of that dislocation,” he told CoStar News.
His “Washington Renaissance Strategy,” as he calls it, is to target acquisitions across the District’s urban core at what his team considers the lowest basis entry point in four decades. That means looking for potential fix-up properties that can then support higher rents.
EastBanc in expansion mode
EastBanc is a commercial real estate firm that develops, acquires, repositions luxury residential, high-street retail, trophy office, and hotel properties and provides asset management. It has offices in Washington, D.C., New York and Lisbon, Portugal. The firm's portfolio in Georgetown includes the location that tech behemoth Google chose for its planned brick-and-mortar store in the District.
The company's new CEO said EastBanc's financial structure has it well positioned.
“It’s a great time to be a buyer and a really tough time to be an owner, and I’m both,” Philippe Lanier said. “What is different for my firm, relative to these institutional investors, is I’m not just an investor of my own company for my own balance sheet but I’m an operating partner and a developer that will actually build the strategies and execute on them to fix the buildings and fill them.”
To help achieve that, his team is in expansion mode. Right now, EastBanc has about 50 employees and Lanier’s goal is to get to between 70 and 100 in the next 18 months. While he’s open to work in other markets, the fundamental focus remains Washington, D.C.
Philippe joined EastBanc in 2007 after more than eight years combined as an equity research analyst at Lehman Brothers and Bank of America Securities, where he covered energy, refining, and shipping sectors, as well as time as an acquisitions manager at the European office of Prudential Real Estate Investors. He's fluent in German and Portuguese in addition to his native English.
From 2019 to 2024, he served as CEO of EastBanc Technologies, repositioning the business as an artificial intelligence-focused professional services firm. He led the company until EastBanc sold it to software engineering company and global technology consultancy Solvd Inc. in October 2024.
As the younger Lanier takes the reins, he said, "I’ve learned everything from my father."
But in particular, Philippe Lanier said he "learned how to value good people and good partners."
His father also taught him about timing. "It’s easy to buy real estate when you have money, it’s fun to buy it when you don't," the younger Lanier said.
Looking forward, Philippe Lanier said he and his father share many of the same sentiments as to the current state of the commercial real estate market, though the younger Lanier is concentrating more on a longer-term horizon.
“What makes this transition meaningful is that it’s not just my son taking over — it’s a team that understands our markets, our partners and our long-term investment philosophy,” Anthony Lanier said in a statement. “Philippe also brings a practitioner’s perspective on the future of work, shaped by his experience building" an AI-focused company.