CREModels Team Bios

CREModels co-founder and Managing Director Mike Harris is a lifelong technologist with more than 25 years of experience in commercial real estate. It is a rare combination that makes Mr. Harris, who wrote CREModels’ signature CRE Suite platform from the ground up, a sought-after resource for forward-thinking investors, developers, brokers and fund-managers across the United States.

In addition to overseeing strategy and general operations for the firm, Mr. Harris directs our technology consulting team on a wide array of collaborations with real estate clients. These projects can include building tech stacks and ground-up apps, migrating existing data to new systems, integrating project and accounting data into executive dashboards, and automating processes and workflows via AI, to name just a few.

Informally, industry colleagues often turn to Mr. Harris for tips on how to use CRMs and SEO tools to ramp up their marketing efforts, or better leverage tech to create more compelling OMs, RFPs and investor presentations.   

Prior to co-founding CREModels, as an expert in real estate distressed debt and REO transactions, Mr. Harris helped form the special assets services division of a large commercial real estate brokerage firm, later directing its loan sales division. In an entrepreneurial side project, he and a business partner responded to the GFC by launching a private equity fund geared toward acquiring distressed assets. All told, as an entrepreneur, investor, syndicator, broker, and lender, Mr. Harris has been involved in transactions totaling more than $20 billion.

Mr. Harris, who completed the Real Estate Executive Seminar at Harvard Business School, is a frequent speaker on the intersection of tech and real estate, with an emphasis on proactive responses to the changing business cycle. He has provided news-article commentary and/or thought leadership columns to multiple real estate publications and is a longtime member of the high-IQ society Mensa International. 

Mr. Harris received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of South Florida and his MBA from The University of Florida. He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife and three children. In his spare time, he enjoys tangling with marlin, grouper, sailfish and mahi mahi as an avid offshore angler.