“I'd rather be alive at 18% than dead at the prime rate.” - Big Bill Zeckendorf

Gary Barnett scored a mammoth $1.2B refi for his UWS luxury condo. The Zeckendorf bros, grandsons of Big Bill, landed nearly $1B in construction financing for their Hudson River-adjacent condo project, likely the largest ground-up resi deal in New York since the pandemic began. Despite the turmoil in the real estate capital markets, with many banks hanging out on the sidelines or being cavity-searched by regulators, pedigreed sponsors are still filling up their capital stacks. But the makeup of those stacks has changed dramatically: it’s the major debt funds and other alternative lenders that are now front and center. With access to cheap capital and operating in a sort of regulatory DMZ, they are filling what KKR’s head of RE credit Matt Salem recently described as a $500B+ hole in the market.

The Promote decided it was time for a snapshot of some of the most active alt lenders in the mix: who they’re run by, what deals they’re doing, and where their money’s coming from. It’s a meaty series, so we’ll do Pt. I today.