Matt Hunsucker Builds a Data Empire in Overlooked Real Estate Niches

Written by:

Steve Marcinuk

Date:

19 Mar 2025

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In the competitive landscape of commercial real estate, while institutional investors rush toward mainstream asset classes, Matt Hunsucker has discovered opportunity in the industry’s blind spots. As the founder of IOS List and a portfolio of specialized media platforms serving hyper-niche real estate segments, Hunsucker is proving that sometimes the most lucrative path involves helping others find their way rather than following the crowd.

Hunsucker’s journey through real estate spans over two decades, beginning in investment banking before the Great Financial Crisis and winding through multi-family acquisitions, workouts, and eventually to his current role as principal at McKennon, the real estate arm of a family office in Raleigh, North Carolina. But it’s his side project turned thriving business that caught our attention.

“I stumbled into it as we were evaluating industrial land sites for development,” Hunsucker explains about his introduction to Industrial Outdoor Storage (IOS). “Up until 2019, I had no idea what industrial outdoor storage was. I was a multi-family guy throughout my career.”

What he discovered was a compelling investment case: assets with minimal capital expenditure requirements, fortune 500 tenants, and most importantly, scarce zoning that created a significant supply-demand imbalance. Coming from apartment operations with their high operational intensity and expense load, the contrast was striking.

“The setup was incredible as an investment,” Hunsucker recalls. “In its simplest form, it’s just an empty gravel lot—but there are a thousand flavors of it, including some highly amenitized short-term truck parking, which supports e-commerce and logistics.”

But as he researched the sector, Hunsucker noticed something else—fragmented ownership, institutional capital flowing in, and a striking lack of centralized information. Veteran operators had been quietly dominating the space for decades, while new capital was entering rapidly.

Information as the Competitive Edge

Rather than competing directly against well-capitalized groups with years of specialized experience, Hunsucker identified a different opportunity.

“Do I want to compete against these very well-capitalized groups who are experts, some 10-year plus veterans, or is there another way to play the trend?” he asked himself. The answer became IOS List.

“A lot of IOS List was scratching my own itch in the beginning,” Hunsucker admits. “I was having trouble finding information as I was looking at IOS deals to help underwrite them, to understand who the tenants were, what the rents were.”

He began compiling a newsletter, aggregating news and transactions, and sharing it with his industrial contacts in the Southeast. The response surprised him.

“People responded to it well. It was right place, right time, just lucky, as much as anything,” he says modestly.

But Hunsucker quickly recognized that IOS wasn’t the only underserved segment. This insight led to the expansion of his media portfolio to include platforms like Build-to-Rent List and Small Bay List—all following a similar model of providing specialized information to niche real estate segments.

“There are a bunch of other niches that set up in a very similar fashion that had fragmented ownership, poor media coverage,” he explains. “They’re not the big markets like office or industrial. They’re not the big pieces of the pie. They’re more specialized subsets of those, but still had dedicated brokers, dedicated capital, dedicated sponsors who only do those specific niches.”

The Information Gap

What Hunsucker discovered reveals a significant gap in the commercial real estate information landscape. While major data providers dominate mainstream sectors, their offerings often don’t align with the needs of specialists.

“If you are chasing a very niche property segment, paying for several thousand a month subscription when you only use a sliver of the data, that becomes not optimal for everyone,” Hunshcker explains. “It’ll never be their main focus.”

His solution combines hands-on research with network-driven information sharing. “A lot of it is just boots on the ground work, and a lot of our audience provides the data directly, because they benefit from the exposure in the space,” he notes. “If you’re buying or selling BTR deals, it helps you to be visible, helps get your brand recognition out to brokers.”

His team supplements this with extensive research and a variety of sources to compile comprehensive transaction data. “Our goal is to just make it easy for everyone to do their next deal, to do their next deal faster, to check comps,” Hunsucker says.

Perhaps most importantly, his platforms serve an educational function for capital providers. “Particularly to the newer niches like IOS, we want to be able to educate the lenders and educate the capital providers so they can more confidently deploy into the space.”

The Accelerating Specialization Trend

Hunsucker’s success reflects a broader trend in commercial real estate—increasing specialization among investors and operators seeking competitive advantages.

“I absolutely think it has been a trend, and it’s accelerating,” Hunsucker observes. “More and more, as you compete for capital and compete for deals, it becomes easier to focus.”

He points out that specialized strategies help investors craft better stories for capital raising and establish more efficient acquisition parameters. “You have a more concise box with what you’re looking for, so you’re not spread far and wide with a bunch of different assets.”

There are also operational advantages to this approach. “There’s the compounding benefit in having a tighter network as you go, and being a repeat buyer, being a repeat property manager that specializes in BTR instead of just apartments,” he notes. “There are nuances that help the sales pitch for everyone.”

Looking Ahead

Hunsucker’s platforms have been deliberately positioned as primarily free resources initially, focusing on building usage before emphasizing monetization. “My perspective and strategy on that is just to get as much traction and usage as we can early and then figure out monetization after that, after you have enough people using where you can really ask them what they need,” he explains.

The model appears to be working. What started as a side project has grown into a substantial business, with plans for continued expansion. Hunsucker is now looking at launching several new niche platforms, potentially entering larger real estate verticals, and even considering specialized in-person events.

For those watching the real estate landscape, Hunsucker’s approach offers a valuable lesson. By identifying the information gaps that larger players overlook, he’s built a meaningful position at the intersection of media, data, and specialized real estate—providing essential intelligence that drives smarter investment decisions in emerging sectors.