Jenny Zhan, founder and CEO of Beyond Holding Company, is staking bold capital on distressed commercial real estate assets at a time when most institutional players are tightening their exposure—transforming systemic market dislocation into what could potentially be the most lucrative CRE opportunity of the decade.
Zhan, who was also a panelist at GlobeSt’s recent Women of Influence conference, radiates a calm in her Houston office born of 30 years of investment practice, with 13 spent in the unpredictable, high-stakes world of commercial real estate. Today, as CRE faces what she calls “a 1-2-3 punch”—first the shock of the pandemic, then a surge in interest rates and now skyrocketing construction costs—Zhan is doubling down on distressed properties, a strategy she has turned into an unlikely engine for growth.
Zhan’s professional philosophy is rooted in realism rather than bravado. “A lot of investment vehicles are in a bull market, but very unfortunately, commercial real estate now is in a bear market,” she tells GlobeSt. The damage inflicted by Covid first ravaged sectors like hotels and retail, and lingering effects continue to gnaw away at office buildings. Then, as the pandemic ebbed, soaring interest rates pushed highly leveraged properties to the brink. “I saw a lot of office buildings in Houston where the owners can’t even pay tenant improvements for new tenants to move in. They don’t have the money to do upgrades,” she said. Yet she’s quick to point out the flipside: “This…presents opportunities for other investors.”
For Beyond Holding Company, that means shifting from lender to acquirer. Zhan describes her company’s focus as “actively buying distressed assets at this moment.” Where others see risk, she sees a rare chance to buy prime properties at “a fraction of replacement value,” sometimes approaching the “land value” alone. In the first half of this year, Beyond deployed around $50 million into CRE deals, fueled partly by a loyal client base of high-net-worth families and seasoned professionals, many of them immigrants whose first investments in the U.S. began with the government’s EB-5 visa program.
These days, Zhan explains, her clients self-sort into two tribes: those who value steady yields and favor commercial property debt, and those—often younger or more experienced—drawn to the raw upside of acquiring distressed assets alongside Beyond. The distressed theme is nearly universal now, thanks to macroeconomic factors rather than operator missteps. These, she says, “have created some of the best opportunities you’ll find in a decade.”
Zhan’s strategy rests on bedrock investment tenets: strong locations, sound demographics and hearty, if temporarily troubled, cash flows. “We’re looking for distressed and quality assets in good locations,” she states. The goal is not rapid expansion but instead acquiring existing assets at discounted prices, investing in upgrades and repositioning, and then capturing the rebound. The approach has already yielded impressive returns. She recalls a distressed apartment purchase at the start of the COVID crisis that “delivered a 60% return to our investors” upon sale just three years later. Another timely bet on Arizona shopping centers delivered similarly strong results.
While many investors remain hesitant to touch office space, Zhan is undeterred. She sees value in the sector’s wreckage, particularly in cities like Houston, Phoenix and other Sun Belt markets attracting major corporate relocations and manufacturing initiatives. Zhan’s mantra is to “always follow the money, follow the investment, follow the demographic.” She pays close attention to where industrial giants and tech titans are building—as typically businesses enter a market first, and commercial real estate follows.
Zhan’s own entry into CRE investing was born of convergence and necessity. After years of managing emerging market portfolios as a CFA at an investment management firm, she found herself in early 2010s China representing a wealth management company just as the EB-5 visa program soared in popularity. “There was a shortage of money for U.S. real estate at that time, and no banks were willing to lend,” she remembers. High-net-worth immigrants, hungry for opportunity and eager to qualify for U.S. residency, poured capital into job-creating U.S. real estate projects, and Zhan became the crucial bridge connecting these investors to American assets.
“My financial background helped me realize commercial real estate has a lot of investment opportunity—really, it’s no less than the stock market. Valuation matters, and acquiring at value is much more important," she said. By aggregating high-net-worth capital into targeted funds, Beyond Holding began carving its niche in value-add and distressed investment.
Her risk discipline—honed first in the stock market—permeates every CRE deal she underwrites. She draws clear parallels between stock and real estate investing: “In both, you have to do rigorous analysis and buy at value, holding for the long term,” she asserts.
In the years since founding Beyond in January 2020—just as the pandemic hit—Zhan has led her company through storms and into the Inc. 5000 list twice in succession. She’s convinced that the future holds even more promise, especially as regulatory changes on alternative investments open new paths for capital to flow into private equity, real estate, and new technologies like blockchain, which she views as potential game-changers in unlocking CRE’s liquidity.
"We survived because of the trust of my clients and because of the opportunities," Zhan siad. In today’s battered CRE markets, where fear keeps most buyers at bay, her playbook—prudent contrarianism—looks less like gambling and more like vision.
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