25+ Years Leading Real Estate Development
Daniel Kaufman is a real estate developer who began his career in Detroit in 1992 and has spent the past 25+ years leading his own real estate development companies, spanning design, construction, finance, and development. He specializes in site selection and acquisition for new development initiatives, particularly build-to-rent townhomes, and brings a collaborative team approach to every project, ensuring each meets its owners’ unique needs, mitigates risk, and reaches completion on time and on budget.
From Detroit to a National Platform
CORE COMPETENCIES
Land Use & Zoning
Site selection, acquisition, and entitlement strategy for new development initiatives.
Financing, Underwriting & Due Diligence
Disciplined capital structuring and risk analysis carried through every stage of a project.
Design & Construction
Hands-on oversight of design and construction, delivered through a collaborative team approach.
FOCUS AREAS
Builder, Investor, Founder
A builder, problem solver, and visionary leader who began his real estate career in Detroit in 1992, flipping homes, and went on to launch his first real estate development company 25+ years ago. Since then, he has overseen $2B+ in project value, 10,000+ units across all asset classes, from affordable, mixed-income, and market-rate communities to 1,100+ hotel rooms nationwide, working across the Mountain West, Texas, Florida, Vermont, and the Northeast.
“You don’t need another opinion. You need someone who’s done it.”
“The number I care most about is not project value or units delivered. It is how many of the people I have done business with would work with me again.”
Daniel is also Founder & Principal of Kaufman & Company ↗, a permanent-capital holding company spanning ten operating companies across real estate, workforce housing, and venture capital, and a d/b/a of Kaufman Family Office LLC and Kaufman Real Estate & Consulting LLC, the entity through which Daniel operates this site, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, with an office in Orlando, Florida.
A Family Office Since 1956
The Kaufman Family Office was founded in 1956 by Donald Bruce Kaufman. The following year, in 1957, Donald co-founded Kaufman & Broad alongside Eli Broad, a separate venture that grew into one of the first publicly traded homebuilders on the New York Stock Exchange, later known as KB Home. The Kaufman Family Office itself remained a distinct, privately held family enterprise.
Donald Bruce Kaufman led the Kaufman Family Office until his death in a plane crash near Camarillo, California, on January 4, 1983, an accident that also claimed the life of his son-in-law, Eyal Horwitz. His four sons carried the office forward for more than three decades, and in 2020 its stewardship was turned over to Daniel Kaufman. In 2026, the collection of Kaufman family office companies was merged into Kaufman & Company, now led by Daniel Kaufman and the board of directors of Kaufman family members.
Figures reflect the platform Daniel Kaufman leads today through Kaufman & Company. Read more at Kaufman & Company ↗
Daniel's connection to New England runs deeper than real estate. See Skiing.
Skiing, Since the Age of Six
Daniel has been skiing since he was six years old. Skiing was an important activity for his whole family, and his father, mother, sister, and even his grandmother all skied.
As a child, Daniel spent much of his time drawing his own maps of the ski areas he dreamed of developing one day, an early glimpse of the real estate career that followed. In 1992, he enrolled in a ski area management program and began working at Sunday River, in Maine. He continued on to the University of Vermont (UVM), where he lived, skied, learned, and worked.
Today, Daniel and his father still ski together, as Daniel looks to expand his connection to skiing and the communities that surround it, an interest that now extends to the independent mountain resorts and ski-town housing markets he writes about and invests in. See Personal & Passion Projects for more.
Daniel's real estate career, including his leadership of the Kaufman Family Office, is detailed above.