Spotlight: Hines, Hines Global Income Trust and the HREX DST Program

Hines Private Wealth Solutions has raised more than $1.9 billion through 1031 DSTs since 2022, and in April the REIT that supplies those properties used a built-in option to take two of them back in exchange for operating partnership units.

November 2, 2026

Hines is a privately owned real estate investment manager founded in Houston in 1957 by Gerald D. Hines. The firm reports managing approximately $91 billion of assets for institutional and private wealth clients as of June 30, 2026, with 4,600 employees in 29 countries. Advisors reach it through Hines Private Wealth Solutions, the firm's affiliated broker-dealer, which distributes two linked programs: Hines Global Income Trust (HGIT), a public non-listed REIT, and Hines Real Estate Exchange (HREX), a series of Delaware statutory trust offerings holding properties sourced from HGIT's portfolio.

On October 20, 2026, Hines announced that HREX 9 DST had closed at approximately $591 million, the largest DST offering the firm has completed. The trust holds two apartment properties, the 495-unit Gables Station in Coral Gables, Florida, and the 451-unit Left Bank in Chicago's Fulton Market/West Loop. Its amended Form D reports 550 investors, a $250,000 minimum investment and a first sale on December 17, 2025. Hines says HREX has raised more than $1.9 billion from qualified investors since launching in 2022.

How the DST program connects to the REIT

HGIT's SEC filings set out the structure. Each HREX property is master-leased to a subsidiary of HGIT's operating partnership, which subleases the space to tenants, and the operating partnership guarantees the master lease. The operating partnership also holds a fair market value purchase option: the right, but not the obligation, to acquire the DST investors' interests during a 12-month window that opens two years after an offering closes, paying in operating partnership units.

HGIT exercised that option for the first time on April 1, 2026. It covered 200 Park Place, the Houston office building in the first HREX offering ($152 million, completed in December 2023), and EMME, the Chicago apartment building in the first multifamily DST (completed in March 2024). According to HGIT's second-quarter 10-Q, the trust issued 21.1 million OP units for a net investment of $207.1 million. For those investors, the 1031 exchange into a DST was followed by a contribution into the REIT's operating partnership, the sequence commonly called a 721 exchange.

The trust behind the offerings

HGIT commenced operations in 2014 and invests in the U.S. and internationally. Hines reports a gross asset value for the trust of about $7.29 billion as of September 30, 2026. Its property list in the 10-Q spans living, industrial, office and retail assets, including student housing in Dublin and an office building in London alongside its U.S. holdings. Earlier HREX offerings drawn from that portfolio include HREX 6, a $246.5 million DST holding two apartment properties near Northwestern University and the University of Maryland.

Origins and the private wealth arm

Gerald Hines was a mechanical engineer designing building systems in Houston before he started the firm. By the firm's account, its early work was a dozen office projects on Houston's Richmond Avenue, followed by One Shell Plaza, the tallest building in Texas when it was completed in 1971, and The Galleria. Its first international project, Les Terrasses in Montreal, followed in 1976. His son Jeff Hines became president and CEO in 1990.

The broker-dealer dates to 2003 and operated as Hines Securities until April 2024, when Hines renamed it Hines Private Wealth Solutions after hiring Paul Ferraro, formerly head of Carlyle's private wealth business, to lead the effort. The firm reported that the platform had raised more than $11 billion as of June 30, 2024, across non-traded REITs, private placements and tax-deferred exchanges.

A research position on timing

In a February 2026 paper, Hines Research argued for starting development early in a recovery. Looking at three U.S. property cycles beginning in 1990, it found that development strategies launched in years two through four of a cycle historically outperformed that cycle's average, with year three strongest. It estimated that the current recovery is running about a year behind prior cycles, which places year three in 2026.

Leadership from January 2027

On October 2, Hines announced that Adam Hines will join his sister, Laura Hines-Pierce, as co-CEO effective January 1, 2027, with Jeff Hines becoming chairman. David Steinbach will become the firm's first president, and Alfonso Munk, the global co-head of investment management who has spoken for the firm on the HREX offerings, will become global CIO. Hines-Pierce will also succeed her father as CEO and board chair of HGIT.