Leadership track record and expertise

Since 2007, Howard Kaye, Brian Chase, and William Howard have been making numerous strategic investments and building businesses across various asset classes together including private equity, private credit, and real estate. Their strategy is to partner with institutional quality operators to purchase mispriced assets in inefficient markets with lower risk and opportunistic returns. Over the years this has led to building portfolios in industrial, value add multifamily, marinas, self-storage and other segments of real estate as well as private companies and lending platforms.  After identifying manufactured housing as the area of most significant opportunity, they made a minority seed investment in a manufactured housing platform in 2021 and joined its advisory board. To further build exposure to the asset class and take advantage of the favorable market dynamics, in 2023, they founded Usonia Partners LLC with David Cornell as their operating partner. The platform is dedicated to acquiring, improving, and managing value-add manufactured housing communities across the U.S. with a buy and hold strategy.

Usonia leadership

Howard Kaye

Co-founder

Howard Kaye founded Kaye Insurance Associates, Inc. with his father in 1969, growing the business to become the largest privately held property and casualty insurance broker in the U.S. Howard ran the company as Chairman and CEO, navigating through a minority sale to a private equity firm, an IPO on NASDAQ, and eventually a sale to another private equity firm, who rebranded the company to HUB International, now the 5th largest insurance broker in the world. Howard formed a family office in 2000, and has invested in thousands of investment partnerships, including 40+ value add multifamily properties.

Howard holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from New York University.

Brian Chase

Co-founder

Brian Chase brings over 20 years experience as a senior executive at several leading alternative asset management firms. Brian spent 14 years at Garrison Investment Group where he was a Partner and Chief Operating Officer since the firm’s inception in 2007.

Previously, he was CFO of newly-formed distressed credit business at the Blackstone Group and was part of the initial team that established the special situations business at Fortress Investment Group.

Brian holds a B.S. in Accounting from Binghamton University.

William Howard

Co-founder

William Howard is the CIO at a Florida based single-family office since 2011. He oversees a portfolio of alternative assets including private equity, hedge funds, private credit, real estate, and art. Throughout his career, William has invested in hundreds of private deals across all market sectors. He is an advisor and sits on the board of numerous funds and privately held companies.

William holds an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business specializing in quantitative finance, and a B.S. in economics from College of Charleston.

David Cornell

Partner

David Cornell brings over 28 years of domain experience, having held multiple essential roles throughout the MHC sector. He is the President of Elevate MHC, a vertically-integrated property manager and wholly-owned subsidiary of Usonia. Previously, David served as Director of Operations for Cal-Am Properties (50 parks in 8 states), and as the COO for Investment Property Group (110 parks in 12 states.)

From repositioning assets, Executing on large scale acquisitions, to major home infill projects, David is known for building and leading some of the most dynamic management teams in the industry.