Founded by Shay Sellars, SASRE Properties is a real estate investment, redevelopment, and advisory company focused on creative real estate opportunities in communities that have experienced decades of disinvestment.
Many of the places where we work are majority-Black communities where more than 30 percent of residents live below the poverty line. At the same time, rising land values, new development, and outside investment increasingly place these communities in the path of gentrification. Their residents continue to experience the effects of long-term neglect even as the places they call home become newly valuable to others.
What happens when a place that has historically been treated as expendable suddenly becomes desirable? That question sits at the center of our work.
The effects of disinvestment are often visible in everyday life: overcrowded housing, inadequate heating and cooling, deferred maintenance, limited access to quality housing, and people returning from incarceration with few stable places to land. These conditions are not abstract market failures. They shape the daily lives of residents and the long-term trajectory of neighborhoods.
SASRE Properties approaches investment with an understanding that developers have both agency and responsibility. When we enter a city or town, we make a long-term commitment to participate in its revitalization while holding space for a more diverse and inclusive reimagining of place.
We pursue that work in several ways. We invest directly through the acquisition, rehabilitation, and stewardship of real estate, including historic and architecturally significant properties. We invest indirectly by advising property owners, redeveloping residential and commercial assets, and using brokerage and market knowledge to broaden access to investment opportunities.
Our approach is informed by the methods of social scientists and ethnographers. We begin by listening to residents and understanding the community on its own terms. We review past and present strategic plans, study the local market, and identify the institutions and stakeholders shaping development, including property owners, developers, investors, public agencies, churches, nonprofits, and small businesses.
From there, we identify gaps in the market and determine where our capital, relationships, and expertise can have the greatest impact. We develop an investment strategy, test it against local conditions, and refine it over time. Our work is intentionally iterative; we expect a strategy to evolve as the market and the community change.
As a small team, we extend our capacity through collaboration. We work with designers, artists, academics, tradespeople, planners, developers, and other practitioners whose perspectives strengthen the work. We see development as a conversation: one that brings together capital, place, history, design, and the people who will ultimately live with the outcomes.
Shay Sellars
Founder & Principal
Liberty Street friends handing outside their buildings during the summer. Photo by Rog & Bee Walker