Spotlight: Moody National Companies and Its Village Towers DST

The Houston sponsor built Village Towers in 2019, keeps its headquarters there, and now offers the complex to 1031 investors through a DST carrying roughly 35% to 37% leverage.

November 6, 2026

Moody National Companies is a Houston commercial real estate firm that Brett C. Moody founded in 1996 as a mortgage banking company. It now runs as seven affiliated businesses covering mortgage brokerage, development, property and hotel management, sponsorship, title, 1031 exchange services and insurance brokerage. The firm describes the arrangement as handling one real estate transaction from start to finish. Its two current offerings, both sold by affiliated broker-dealer Moody Securities to accredited investors through registered investment advisors and licensed financial advisors, put that model to work on Houston projects that Moody affiliates built or are building.

From Mortgage Brokerage to Hotel Sponsor

Before starting the firm, Moody was a financial analyst at Dunkum Mortgage Group, now Grandbridge Real Estate Capital. According to Moody National, its mortgage company moved from the correspondent model toward representing borrowers, and it reports more than 200 financings in 40 states totaling about $2 billion of debt, equity and structured capital.

The firm says its realty arm and affiliates have acquired more than 70 hotels, including a 20-hotel, 3,700-room portfolio bought for about $400 million in 2007, which the firm says ranked as the fourth-largest U.S. hotel transaction that year. Its hotel management company began by running only affiliated properties. It now also takes on turnaround assignments and can serve as a receiver for lenders. The firm says it trains hotel managers on the valuation arithmetic directly: depending on the cap rate, each added dollar of profit adds $12 to $15 of value.

Moody National REIT I and REIT II

Moody National sponsored two publicly registered non-traded REITs that bought branded select-service hotels. Moody National REIT I merged into Moody National REIT II on Sept. 27, 2017, and REIT I stockholders could take 0.41 REIT II shares or $10.25 in cash for each share. REIT II stockholders approved a plan of liquidation on Sept. 30, 2025, and the REIT has been selling its remaining hotels since.

According to a September 2025 offering summary, Moody National Realty and its affiliates have raised equity from more than 10,000 investors through private programs and the two REITs, for total capitalization of more than $2.2 billion. The firm's published acquisition criteria favor Class A properties on the coasts or in the Sunbelt south of Interstate 70, in states ranking in the top quartile for population growth, and in metro areas with an expanding government employment base and a major university.

The Village Towers DST

Moody National Development completed Village Towers in 2019: two six-story buildings of office space over ground-floor restaurants and retail on the Katy Freeway in West Houston's Hedwig Village. Moody Village Towers DST now owns the complex. Per the executive summary, the DST was capitalized at $210.75 million, made up of $136.25 million of equity and a $74.5 million interest-only loan fixed at 5.09% that matures in November 2032. The sponsor puts the loan-to-purchase-price ratio at about 37% excluding operating reserves and about 35% including them.

Minimums are $100,000 for 1031 exchange investors and $25,000 for cash investors, and the stated business plan is to prepare the property for sale in roughly 10 years. Office tenants come from oil and gas, engineering, banking, insurance and real estate, and Moody National appears on the tenant list itself, since its headquarters is in the complex. The offering documents disclose that the trust acquired the property from Moody affiliates.

Moody Financial Fund III

The second offering finances a building that does not exist yet. Moody Financial Fund III sells preferred LLC units, up to $40 million with a $50,000 minimum, to fund Silo Springs Apartments, a planned five-story, 346-unit Class A complex on about 5.2 acres in Houston's Memorial and Spring Branch area. The site sits within a 16.65-acre, multi-phase project expected to add retail and office space. The units carry a 10% preferred distribution and are redeemable at par on July 31, 2028, with one possible 12-month extension, and the fund may redeem units early starting six months after issuance. Moody affiliates are handling the development and construction.