Joshua Blevins

Hingham, MA

ALB, Harvard University

Josh comes to MIT after sixteen years as a real estate entrepreneur. For the past eleven years, he has focused on affordable multifamily housing, adaptive reuse of large historic structures, urban infill, and mixed-use development. In 2024, his company exited the majority of its multifamily portfolio to private equity.

His investment thesis is highly opportunistic. Projects involve complex deal structures and capital stacks that almost always include hard and soft debt from public and private lenders, an alphabet soup of state and federal tax credits, and an assortment of state and local stakeholders. He completed a dozen projects involving brownfields remediation.

In an upstart company with a frenetic deal pace—and with responsibility for all phases of development from predevelopment to construction into operations through disposition—Josh was forced to become a generalist.  At the Center for Real Estate, he looks forward to doing a deeper dive into key areas of interest with some of the foremost minds in the industry.

Josh has seen the transformative power of placemaking—the power of capital, thoughtfully deployed, to improve people’s lives through a better built environment. He hopes to use his time at MIT to consider new ways of doing this. 

He has served on public and private boards related to affordable housing, historic preservation, education, and civic engagement. Prior to his career as a developer, Josh worked in politics and government, including as a registered lobbyist.

Originally from Arkansas, Josh now lives with his wife and kids (aged five and three) on Massachusetts’ South Shore, where he spends as much time as possible on the water. He enjoys mentoring and judging high school debaters.