Pooja Karia is a Director in Real Estate team at Get Living, a leading developer and operator of large-scale Build-to-Rent Neighbourhoods. She has a broad range of skill sets and over 14 years of experience in market & customer insight, strategy planning, portfolio management and risk management with a focus on Build-to-Rent, student housing and commercial real estate in the UK.
She has a strong track record in leading due diligence, underwriting and asset valuation process, developing asset business plans, setting strategies to maximise value of the portfolio, and investor/Board reporting. She lead the sale of 22% Qatari Diar stake in Get Living to Aware Super. She is also Get Living Managing Director on T3 Board, a For Profit Registered Provider for managing affordable housing stock in Elephant Castle Town Centre development in London.
Prior to Get Living, she was at iQ Student Accommodation for five years where she initially lead the merger between Wellcome Trust and Goldman Sachs which was successfully completed in February 2016 and was then involved in iQ sale process which was acquired by Blackstone in May 2020. She has overseen the integration of iQ and Prodigy living brand when Wellcome Trust and Goldman Sachs merged and then supported the shareholders in exit strategy. As part of the asset management team, she led acquisition and divestment opportunities and was the asset manager of the operational portfolio.
She is originally from India and came to UK in September 2007 for further studies. She is a qualified Pharmacist with Bachelors degree in Pharmacy from Mumbai University in India. She did a Bachelors in Business Administration (Top-Up degree) from the University of East London in 2007 and a Masters in Finance from Bayes Business School in 2009. She started her career in Real Estate at Chenavari Investment Managers, a hedge fund where she was an analyst focusing on structured finance and real estate fund.
She is a member of Get Living’s various committees including ESG Committee, Operating Committee, Development Committee, Risk Committee and Governance Committee. She is also a member of BPF Build-to-Rent Committee and ARL Multi-family Sector Committee.
Outside work, she loves doing charity work and spending time with family and friends. Pooja is a mother of 2 year old son and is navigating the constant juggle many working mothers experience.
