Harry Bookey remembers landing his first real estate deal in San Antonio. His next deal came when he invited a business partner to dinner.

Harry Bookey remembers landing his first real estate deal in San Antonio. His next deal came when he invited a business partner to dinner.

Bookey, now 76, recently closed on the sale of his companies, BH Management Services and the operations of BH Equities, to New York-based Pretium Partners. The close of the sale on Wednesday marks the beginning of the next chapter for Harry and his wife, Pam Bookey.

Harry Bookey began working at the age of 16 in his dad’s Des Moines meatpacking plant, where he was a cattle buyer. The money he earned helped him pay for college. Bookey received his business and law degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He later returned to Des Moines because his dad was ill. He and Pam, originally from Chicago, met in Des Moines.

Together, they would not only build their company into one of the country’s largest multifamily management and investment firms, they went on to leave their mark on the community through their philanthropy and community involvement, including the restoration of the Temple for Performing Arts.

Pam Bookey said giving back to the community has always been a priority for her and her husband.

“As I’ve said to Harry, you don’t give it to be remembered. You give it because it’s the right thing to do,” she said.

Harry Bookey worked as an attorney for about 15 years. During that time he represented what were then called real estate syndicators, those who helped raise capital and manage assets for investors.

“I always wished I was the client,” he said in an interview with the Business Record. “So I left the law practice in late 1991.”

Bookey founded BH – his initials inverted because HB was already taken – in late 1992 and struck his first deal the following year. He started in a small room in the office of a friend.

Bookey said a friend from his days in law practice knew a guy in New Orleans who was trying to close a deal on a 156-unit apartment complex in San Antonio but needed help raising capital. It was during the savings and loan crisis, and Bookey said he raised $300,000 from people he knew from his days practicing law to put the deal together.

It was at the closing, which was done in person those days, that Bookey got his next break.

“It was at the end of the day, and I asked the owner of the savings and loan if he’d like to have dinner. He said, ‘I’d love to, but I have to go to a closing.’”

As it turned out, the closing was with the bank handling the deal Bookey was involved in. According to Bookey, the man said the bank would give him the difference between what Bookey was paying him and the mortgage they owed.

“So, I looked at the guy and said, ‘So, you don’t care what the price is? He looked at me and with that kind of Texas drawl, he said, ‘Nope.’ I asked if he had any more of these deals. He had four, so that’s how I got started.”

“So, I was just asking a person to dinner, and it changed my life,” Bookey said.

It was that initial dinner invitation that launched his career. Bookey said that moment emphasized the importance of building relationships in business, even now, more than 30 years later.

“Having relationships, especially as we grew the company, made a huge difference,” he said. “We had relationships from the maintenance guy to the owners of the New York Mets. It’s been a big part of our growth. We’ve always had more of a family-oriented type business.”

Bookey went on to grow his business to be one of the top institutional multifamily investment and property management companies in the U.S. BH manages 114,000 homes in 370 housing communities in 31 states. That includes multifamily, single-family homes and student housing. It has ownership in about half of the properties it manages, Bookey said.

Bookey also said he’s proud of how vibrant the company has been.

Despite the economic downturns that followed 9/11, the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, BH never missed a payment, he said.

BH changes hands
When the time came to look for a partner to acquire BH Management Services, Pretium was a perfect fit, Bookey said.

As part of the acquisition by Pretium, BH will continue to operate as BH Management Services and be headquartered in Des Moines, with its offices in Capital Square.

“We feel it’s a great fit,” Bookey said. “We’ve had suitors before [but Pretium] looked at things the same way we do, and that is important.”

BH Equities and its real estate investments and other assets remain owned by the Bookeys with any new acquisitions being managed by Pretium. The operations of BH Equities, including acquisition sourcing, asset management, investor relations and investment accounting, moved to BH Management as part of the acquisition by Pretium.

Pretium is a specialized investment firm that is focused on U.S. residential real estate, residential credit and corporate credit. The company, founded in 2012, has more than $50 billion in assets across 30 markets in the U.S. It employs more than 4,000 people across 50 offices, including those in New York, London, Seoul and Sydney.

Another memorable deal
Bookey also spoke about a big deal in Alexandria, Va., involving about 1,500 apartments, that provided another valuable lesson.

He connected with an investor in New York City that BH had managed some properties for and suggested they finance the deal. The property was sold six years later for a $110 million profit. Bookey said he didn’t see any of that profit, but it was a lesson in detail that helped shape the work he does.

The investor invited him to a swanky Manhattan restaurant where Bookey said he thought he would be thanked and maybe have a discussion about a bonus. Instead, the investor told him about an asset manager who saw grass growing on the tennis courts of another BH Management development in Texas. Bookey said he’d take care of it.

A few weeks later, Bookey received a call from a representative of the investor saying a pension fund was thinking of investing with them. Folks with the fund wanted to know what it was like to do business with the investor, and Bookey was asked to make a call.

As a result of that call, pension fund leaders, who had planned to invest $5 million ended up investing $25 million.

“If [the New York investor] was worried about the grass on the tennis court in Texas, that’s who you want to put your money with,” Bookey said. “That was a huge lesson for me. Detail really matters in this business.”

While he never saw a dime from the Virginia deal, Bookey said, “We got the lesson, which meant more going forward.”

Hometown investment and philanthropy
Besides growing their company, the Bookeys have always believed in giving back to the community they have called home and where they raised their family.

Their contributions have been recognized with Harry Bookey’s induction into the Theodore Roosevelt High School Foundation’s Hall of Fame. Bookey is a Roosevelt alumnus.

In addition to BH’s contributions as a company, Harry and Pam Bookey have been involved with projects and organizations such as the Temple for Performing Arts, Isiserettes Drill & Drum Corp., Des Moines Arts Center, Des Moines Symphony, Des Moines Metro Opera, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Iowa and the International Crisis Group.

Harry Bookey tells the story of how a preservationist friend came to him about a building that was going to be torn down. The Bookeys toured the building, saw its potential and marveled at its beauty. The building? The Temple for Performing Arts.

“We were going to buy it but only if we could get a restaurant on the corner,” Harry Bookey said. “We interviewed 10 restaurants … and we were ready to not do it, and then a guy named George Formaro came in.”

According to Bookey, that meeting led him and his wife to buy the building and the opening of Centro.

The Bookeys also started a history series at the Salisbury House and continued that for about 12 years.

Harry Bookey said much of his and his wife’s philanthropy surrounds historic preservation, including the restoration of the former First Church of Christ, Scientist at 3750 Grand Ave. into luxury condominiums.

“We’d walked by that building for 15 years or however long, and I always thought it would make a great apartment,” Pam Bookey said about the former church. “It’s just so beautiful. We thought it’s just going to get razed or turned into another senior life center or something. So we were crazy and went out on a limb.”

The Bookeys bought the church, invested in its restoration and now live there.

Pam Bookey said the vibrancy of a community is incumbent on people becoming involved and finding ways to give back. She also encouraged young people to find a passion.

“I think today they have no sense of history, learned or otherwise,” she said. “People, they move, they don’t live in communities long. They have no ties. They have no sense of history. I think it’s urgent that young people learn to have a passion about something.”