Leading Real Estate Development
Daniel Kaufman is a real estate developer who leads his own real estate development companies, spanning design, construction, 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
Founds Daniel Kaufman LLC
Starts buying, renovating, and renting single family homes and small apartments in Detroit, Michigan, soon extending the same model to Boston, Massachusetts and Burlington, Vermont. His first real estate venture.
Joins Shawmut Design and Construction as an electrician
Spends almost 8 years in the field on commercial construction projects, learning site operations and building systems from the ground up.
Becomes Production Manager at Florida Luxury Home Builders
Moves to Naples, Florida to run field operations, design coordination, and procurement for a luxury custom home builder.
Joins The Affordable Housing Group as Project Executive
Runs project management, project accounting, and predevelopment for the firm’s affordable and workforce housing developments nationwide, carrying each one from site control through construction closeout.
Promoted to Vice President, Real Estate
Leads acquisition and development of 500+ acres and oversees 800+ senior living units nationwide, structuring financing through LIHTC, HUD 221(d)(4), and other public and private capital sources. 12 years at The Affordable Housing Group in total.
Becomes Managing Director at Florida East Coast Railway
Oversees the railway’s real estate portfolio in Miami, Florida, covering strategic planning, land use, development, and asset management, including its first data center and digital infrastructure initiatives.
Founds Kaufman & Company
Launches a platform to coordinate capital, governance, and oversight across a growing family of operating companies.
Partner, Land Development at Cadence Fund
Leads land acquisition for a national build to rent fund alongside Kaufman & Company, sourcing sites off market and securing land 50 to 70 percent below comparable market pricing, building a pipeline of 19 sites and more than 3,000 townhomes. Together with solo projects over the same period, $450M+ of real estate and 4,000+ units. The fund closes in 2025, its land positions continuing as Cadence Fund I within Dissonant Capital.
Kaufman & Company’s ten companies unite under one name
Ten operating companies and seven platform technology companies formally come together under the Kaufman & Company name and brand, six years after the platform’s official 2020 launch.
Studies business and architecture
Business and commerce at the University of Vermont, architecture at the Boston Architectural College.
CORE COMPETENCIES
Land Use & Zoning
Site selection, acquisition, and entitlement strategy for new development initiatives.
Underwriting & Due Diligence
Disciplined underwriting 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 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 that buys land and assets, funds everything itself, and builds and manages it all inside its own platform, 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.
On Set
Daniel between takes during a recent brand photo and video shoot.
A Multi-Generational Family Office Since 1956
The Kaufman Family Office was founded in 1956 as a privately held, family-owned enterprise. It has remained family-led and family-owned across three generations.
Leadership passed through multiple generations of the Kaufman family before its stewardship was turned over to Daniel Kaufman in 2020. 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.