Vlad & the lad have done it: Doronin’s OKO Group & Jonathan Goldstein’s Cain International scored $4.3B in construction debt for their One Beverly Hills development, in what is one of the biggest-ever financing packages for a non-data center project. We’ve previously discussed how this was one of the more confounding capstacks we’ve seen – where does all that money go? – and have also gone in-depth on the pod on the fascinating history (Merv Griffin to the Brothers Candy to Beny Alagem) of the site. But now that the money has come in – $2.8B in sr. from JPM and $1.5B in mezz from REIT Vici – The Promote thought it the perfect excuse to look back at the landscape for some of the biggest construction loans over the past 12 months: Who’s doing them? Who’s getting them? And, just as crucially, who’s brokering them? Let’s dive in👇

Bravo Capital, a leading national healthcare and multifamily lender, has just released The Silver Wave, a must-read guide to SNFs and the growing investment gap in healthcare infrastructure. Over 10,000 Americans turn 65 every single day. By 2040, more than 80M seniors will need care — yet the national inventory of skilled nursing facility (SNF) beds has barely grown in over a decade. Bravo’s new snapshot is the definitive guide to understanding this demographic shift, what it means for SNF demand, and why this may be one of the most compelling long-term opportunities in real estate today.

The 24 deals* we looked at represented ≈ $17B in construction debt, across several asset classes: trophy office, luxe condos, and of course office-resi jobs. Jamie Dimon remains the patron saint of this space – his JPM was in 6 of the deals, led #1, and is part of the lender syndicate on #3 (Extell’s $1.1B package for 655 Madison). No other lender comes close to that footprint x both size and frequency. But as a class of lenders, private credit ran the table: Be it Adi Chugh’s Elliott-backed Tyko (originated 655 Madison, no brokers involved 🫢 ), Apollo, Sculptor, Madison Realty Capital, Ares or Monarch, the list was dominated by debt funds. And then there’s geography: South Florida was the epicenter of large-loan activity, home to half the deals. Some of this was of course due to octogenarian Steve Ross running amok in West Palm Beach: He landed the largest construction loan in state history from Ares/Monarch/HPS in Dec. for his ground-up office project.
*Non-exhaustive, might’ve missed a couple. This list is more to give you a sense of trends than definitive tally

The rundown also shows the quantum of dollars ($2.5B+ on this list alone) flowing into the relatively untested asset class of office-resi: It gave rise to marquee transactions including the Apollo-led record $867M package for 111 Wall, and Nuveen’s mammoth C-PACE package to get Post Brothers going on their DC mega-conversion (we have a behind the deal coming on that one soon, so stay tuned).

Next, let’s look at the brokers in the mix and dive into the full list. This part is for Insiders only, so sign up now to check it out.

(Promote Insiders: Read on for the full list at the end of this newsletter 👇)

Went back on my co-favorite podcast, Bloomberg’s Odd Lots, to discuss how the Iran conflict might impact the capital coming into CRE & the broader investment world from the major GCC allocators. The likes of Abu Dhabi, QIA, KIA, and PIF are HUGE players in the CRE business, both as LPs and through GP staking, and are all over emerging spaces such as private credit & data centers. We also spend a good chunk of time talking about Dubai: its luxury RE boom, its “build your own bear” society, and the impact of this conflict on its safe-haven ambitions. Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube.

There was no one in America who loved malls more. And no one who had the capital, animal instincts and strength of personality to turn that love into a 200M+ sf empire of them. David Simon, who died Sunday at 64 after a battle with cancer, built his family’s Simon Property Group into the world’s largest retail owner, utilizing every trick in the coupon book: plays for distressed retailers, big-ticket M&A, obsessive reinvestment, tapping the public markets. His megabets paid off: the Simons were estimated to be worth $11.6B in ‘24, among America’s richest families.

Simon cut his teeth at the M&A shop of the legendary financier Joseph Perella. After a few years of Wall Street dealmaking, he informed Perella he was moving back to Indianapolis to help figure out his family’s then-struggling retail business. “He said, ‘They know how to build shopping centers, they don’t know how to negotiate with banks,’ ” Perella recalled to WSJ. Simon helped de-lever the firm and prepped it for a ‘93 IPO. He became CEO at 33, and earned a rep as a bare-knuckled dealmaker obsessed w/ the lil’ deets and possessed w/ an extreme appetite for growth: His M&As included the $1.5B play for DeBartolo Realty, the industry's first major mall REIT merger; a hostile takeover of Retail Property Trust; the outlet-mall giant Chelsea Property Group, which birthed the Premium Outlets platform; the takeover of tony mall operator Taubman; and the pandemic-era takeover of struggling retailers such as Brooks Brothers, Forever21, Lucky Brand and the assets of JCPenney. He was tough – he described himself last year as a “domineering-type CEO” – but the track record earned him universal respect. A proper dealmaker – keep shopping up there, David 🛍