NexPoint Residential Trust

Brian Mitts runs NexPoint Residential as CEO and CFO, overseeing the operating team within NexPoint Advisors. The advisory firm is entirely external and controlled by James Dondero's broader NexPoint organization. Material acquisitions and the overarching portfolio strategy are approved by the NXRT board of directors, where Dondero serves as Chairman.

NXRT is a New York Stock Exchange-listed REIT, which means any investor can buy or sell common shares instantly. That daily liquidity contrasts with private real estate funds, which lock capital for years. The trade-off for that liquidity is that the trust publishes quarterly financials and must price its portfolio to the public market, which has historically valued NXRT at a discount to the private-market appraised value of its properties.

The trust does not develop ground-up construction. It acquires existing 1980s- and 1990s-vintage garden-style apartment communities in the Sun Belt, then renovates unit interiors, upgrades common areas, and brings management practices in line with institutional standards. The value-add comes from closing the gap between in-place rents and market rates after improvements.

James Dondero co-founded Highland Capital Management, which historically advised credit hedge funds and registered funds. NexPoint Advisors — the external manager to NXRT — evolved from the real estate platform originally housed within Highland. Today NXRT is managed by the NexPoint affiliated group, which Dondero controls. The two entities share executive officers and back-office infrastructure, but NXRT is a standalone NYSE-listed REIT with its own independent board.

The trust wholly owns its properties and typically does not enter joint ventures at the asset level. It holds ownership through an umbrella partnership REIT structure, acquiring fee-simple interests. NexPoint Residential Trust has occasionally raised equity through common and preferred stock offerings to institutional buyers, but those transactions are securities purchases, not shared asset governance.

NXRT's disclosures confirm it avoids traditional coastal gateway cities — New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C. are absent from the portfolio. It also avoids markets with rent-control regulations. The trust concentrates instead on high-migration Sun Belt metros where new supply can be absorbed by population growth and the regulatory environment is landlord-friendly.

In January 2022, the trust refinanced its floating-rate credit facilities into a single $750 million fixed-rate term facility syndicated by a group of banks. Because the debt is fixed-rate and staggered in maturity, the trust avoided the immediate margin compression that hit many REITs reliant on floating-rate credit lines during the subsequent rate-hiking cycle.