Will returns from Miami condo loans soon pay for hip replacements and those new floors in Boca? We’ve riffed a ton here about how some of the biggest money managers have tapped into the insurance markets as fuel for their private-credit bets – Apollo w/ Athene, Blackstone w/ Legal & General, KKR w/ Global Atlantic etc. But there’s another massive potential pool of capital ($12T!) that has them waiting to exhale – 401(k)s. With the Trump administration’s eagerness to push more retirement savings into PE, firms such as BX, KKR & Blue Owl have been busy forging alliances w/ 401(k) managers, per Bloomberg. Industry leaders have also been lobbying in Washington and perfecting their pitch. “When you look at the business case here, the investor base within defined contribution — it’s the odd man out in retirement,” said Blue Owl’s Sean Connor.

Managing a lot of bank accounts? Most CRE players find tracking cash across banks and project LLCs to be a huge pain… Enter Vesto. With real-time balances, transactions, and cash flow monitoring, Vesto has helped over 100 CRE firms connect and control all their business bank accounts from a single, intuitive dashboard. Check out how Vesto can help you here.

Last week, BX’s Jon Gray announced that his firm & Wellington Management had filed for their first related product together. In May, 401(k) manager Empower said it had tapped firms incl. Apollo & Franklin Templeton (parent to CRE lender Benefit St. Partners) to provide PE, PC and CRE in some accounts. With fund managers unable to squeeze more capital from institutional LPs – Preqin data show that the $177B total haul in ‘24 was down 30% from ‘21 highs – the focus is shifting to figuring out how to tap the massive sums of mom-and-pop wealth. (In multifamily specifically, we’ve explored how firms like Greystar are looking to cozy up to RIAs).

Now, obv only a slice of this 401(k) action makes it into CRE lending deals. But the broader theme is vital for industry players to see. As Apollo’s Scott Kleinman said last year: “The single most important factor for an alternative asset manager is origination capacity. It really is built around, can you originate enough attractive assets to meet your needs?” 👴

We have ourselves somewhat of a recovery: deals for office properties that sold for at least $25M tallied up to $18.2B in the first half of ‘25, a 40% YoY jump from $13B, according to a new REA ranking of Green Street data. Newmark has carved out some distance from its arch-rivals, brokering $3.5B in deals, up 40% YoY, and was joined on the podium by JLL at $2.8B (up 37.5%) and Eastdil at $2.5B (up 46.5%). CBRE placed 4th w/ $1.94B (up 31.9%), and even Cushman had reason to smile, upping its deal volume by 20.4% to hit $1.3B.

Shorenstein scion Brandon Shorenstein, WSJ’s poster child of office market pain, noted that deals have become more competitive to win, w/ multiple rounds of bidding, but still, “nowhere near where it was before Covid.” We should eclipse the $40B in total volume seen in ‘24, due to what’s being dubbed the “great basis reset,” but will likely fall well short of the numbers seen in bumper years such as ‘21 ($107B) and ‘19 ($111B).

Now, we’ll wait and see if Eastdil can pull off another Senna in the rain move to take the top spot as it did last year, or if Newmark can channel Hamilton and fend off its rivals. 🏎

So much happening w/ Simon Dushinshky, a principal at both prolific developer Rabsky Group and affiliate Sky Equity. He’s just scored a $340M refi from Affinius Capital (on our Quiet Kings of Capital list) to complete the 603-unit rental at 313 Bond Street in Gowanus, per CO. The new debt, brokered by Henry Bodek’s Galaxy Capital, should retire the $286M Rabsky landed in spring ‘24 from G4 Capital. Brooklyn CRE junkies will know that this site was once a Yoel Goldman joint, w/ Rabsky stepping in sometime in ‘19.

But there’s another Rabsky deal that is a little trickier to track. Earlier this month, a JV between Fetner, MCB Real Estate & Farallon (another Quiet King) announced a $210M acquisition of a 463-unit rental at 240 Willoughby St. in Fort Greene. News reports had the seller as Rabsky, but sources have since told The Promote that Rabsky had already been taken out a few months prior, by Montgomery Street Partners, which controlled the fee. MSP, which announced a $1B ground-lease focused vehicle in ‘21 headed by Murray McCabe, had bought the property outright from Rabsky that year and simultaneously signed the developer to a 99Y ground lease. Sometime this spring, MSP struck a deal to buy back the leasehold from Rabsky, per sources – the convoluted March amendments on P2 of this doc (h/t PincusCo) provide a clue. MSP then went ahead and sold it to the Fetner JV in the just-announced deal. So our sense, though we’re not 💯 on it, is that MSP is the one who will be paying JLL’s commission.

💓: this feedback on the recent pod from BR - plz keep this kind of insider juice coming: “you guys are missing the main point of the Starwood/Fundamental deal. Whenever the pure mortgage REITs want to try to retain more capital, they buy net lease RE with maximum WALT and depreciation shield to allow for CF retention and create cushion on the REIT minimum distribution requirements. not to mention that an aggressive cost segregation exercise combined with the big beautiful bill provisions could really amp up depreciation.”

Plus: Wednesday’s episode will be a special one - we dive into Related’s de-risking playbook at Hudson Yards 🤩 . You’ll want to listen right away. Apple, Spotify, YT

S/O: Nick from Cushman’s Toronto office who yelled “Love The Promote!” at the 🎾 yesterday - a delightful and unexpected moment 🫡