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Your Commercial Real Estate Insider guide. From profiles of the biggest dealmakers to skyline-shaping transactions, we bring you the deals, breakdowns and war stories that move the market — for insiders, by insiders. From bad-boy guarantees to CMBS tranche warfare to syndicator sins, we cover it all.
Each week, The Promote Podcast explores three of the most interesting and consequential stories in CRE, taking you well beyond the headlines and into the heart of the action. Hosted by the award-winning “Bard of CRE,” Hiten Samtani, founder of ten31 media and author of The Promote newsletter, along with no-BS institutional insider Will Krasne. Also check out our 3x/week newsletter for industry insiders at https://www.thepromote.com/
Hiten Samtani (00:05)
I wanna go to Chicago.
Will Krasne (00:07)
I warn you Jedidiah, you're not gonna like it in Chicago. ⁓
Hiten Samtani (00:23)
Welcome back to the Promote Podcast, your insider guide to the money and many of the CRE markets. I'm Hiten Samtani.
Will Krasne (00:29)
and I'm Will Krasne
Hiten Samtani (00:32)
2026, baby. Happy New Year to all. We have big plans here at the podcast. Expect fun guests, behind the deal dives, live shows, and a lot more goodness.
Will Krasne (00:41)
Speaking of goodness, those of you on YouTube right now can see our faces for better or for worse. We're now on video. My bed sheet is working perfectly. We're ready to go.
Hiten Samtani (00:46)
That's right.
as everything with us it's all a work in progress it's gonna keep getting better and we'll be soon spamming your instagram feeds as well with a lot of clips because we know you can't get enough of us we're gonna
Will Krasne (01:01)
Maybe
on your connected set TVs too, cause I was listening to the town this morning, and apparently Instagram's going there. But anyway, pretty packed docket ⁓
Hiten Samtani (01:10)
Seriously,
America's second city is now going top of mind for national multifamily players. We're going to break down two significant deals, Lutera's monster Aimco buy and S2's debut in the market. We then slip into our jerseys and look at the arcane world of stadium development and all the freebies and surrounding action that comes with it. Finally, we schlep the streets of Brooklyn, where Carlyle and Greenbrook have just pulled off a massive Freddie refi of their walk up empire. A shout out to our sponsor for this episode, Loan Boss.
They're an industry-leading CRE debt management software, and you'll hear more on them in a bit.
Will Krasne (01:45)
All right, so a few quick hits before we get into our main topics.
Hiten Samtani (01:49)
Yeah, this is a nice new feature that I think people are enjoying. Let's go. What do you want to start with?
Will Krasne (01:54)
So
the first is, Saks is potentially filing for bankruptcy.
Hiten Samtani (01:57)
No way, that is totally unpredictable.
Will Krasne (02:00)
Who could have seen this coming except everyone? Billionaire Ben Ashkenazy is tangentially related to this, Hattin, because of a transaction in Los Angeles recently.
Hiten Samtani (02:04)
Big Ben.
Yeah, so Ashkenazy, who has been getting walloped in the press and basically in his business for a couple of years, is now on the offense again. He claims that he's raised $750 million to go shopping, generational opportunity, all that. And he just went and bought the Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills, the superstore, Prime Beverly Hills. I think it's like a block long or a couple blocks. You want to guess what he paid?
Will Krasne (02:36)
think it's a little bit unsure what did he buy and then what did he pay.
Hiten Samtani (02:41)
This is true. Price that we heard that he paid $50 million. That feels... Yeah, that is pretty cheap. He must have squeezed... I would have paid to be in that room with him and whoever the counterparty on the saxophone...
Will Krasne (02:46)
quite cheap.
Baker from his dad was a massive shopping center developer and he bought Saks originally. A big reason for it was the owned real estate. The Saks building in New York essentially was worth X billion dollars and you got the op-co for
Hiten Samtani (03:06)
Is this the one that WeWork took over at C-
Will Krasne (03:08)
some point. That was the Lord and Taylor building.
yeah, which good friend of the pod, kind of Hussie worked on back in the WeWork days. What's interesting though is that they sold this building to Ben because they had a hundred million dollar debt service payment due at the end of December. And apparently Ben closed in like a week.
Hiten Samtani (03:25)
very clear in the press release. says, according to sources involved in the deal, this transaction start to finish seven days. He wanted people to know.
Will Krasne (03:33)
apparently tried to fill the coffers for that debt payment. They missed it and potentially may be filing. They also own some iconic real estate on Fifth Ave right south of the park because they own Bergdorf Goodman. So they have the iconic building next to the Amman. So your beautiful view from the Amman of the Bergdorf HVAC equipment. And they own across the street as well. So they do own some interesting real estate that could be put in play because who knows how the collateralization works in their ABS facility. Interesting things that could be happening.
Hiten Samtani (03:58)
There's some action here.
Totally. And we talk about this a lot, right? Like a lot of your highlight reel buys over your career are often set off by some giant displacement somewhere else, right? this exactly this company imploding could throw up a lot of opportunities. And then we've got Softbank, which is buying our guy, Ganzi
Will Krasne (04:16)
not the outcome I think anyone affiliated with Digital Bridge ultimately wanted or thought they would have in the peak days of 2021 or 2022.
Hiten Samtani (04:26)
If
you remember, Marc Ganzi who we've had on the pod, took over what used to be known as Colony Capital, which is Tom Barrack's firm. And he basically reinvented it as owning the digital railroads, basically became like the king of cell towers, pioneer in the data center space. And he basically reinvented digital bridge as kind of the conduit to the AI economy.
Will Krasne (04:48)
And he was completely right that that bet worked out perfectly. But for whatever reason, the market hasn't really agreed with the stock. I think this takeout, some investors have already been saying that they're going to vote against it. They didn't get other values it because again, they're right in the zeitgeist. We're building and including debt. Yeah, and it was only a 15 % premium to VWAP from where it was trading before. VWAP?
Hiten Samtani (05:04)
valuation is what, four billion?
Seems small,
Say that again, I love that word.
Will Krasne (05:17)
Valuated average pricing. If you look at how much capital digital budget manages, it's over a hundred billion, I think. But a lot of it is sidecar, lower fee. And so not all of it is that juicy, you know, two and twenty.
Hiten Samtani (05:30)
This is not the first time we're hearing about potential &A activity with Digital Bridge. I want to say nine months ago, there was a rumor floating that Josh Harris's family firm... Yeah, they were in talks to pick this up. Credible rumor that one? Credible. Let's leave it at that. All right, so big couple things there that we're going to be watching. But right now, let's go get meloided, baby.
Will Krasne (05:39)
26 North.
Skrrt Gibson's.
Hiten Samtani (06:00)
What is happening in Chicago?
Will Krasne (06:01)
Chicago which a lot of folks would say is uninvestable and if you think of the guys who are investing in Phoenix and Scottsdale Austin, you know Chicago
Hiten Samtani (06:11)
bro, crime, corruption, all of it.
Will Krasne (06:14)
So give it a try. Cook County is the one true landlord that I actually do agree with. It's on the come up and Chicago is the fourth largest city in America, third largest.
Hiten Samtani (06:24)
It's up there, historically been a very important center of real estate as well. It's the second most important skyline in the country for sure.
Will Krasne (06:32)
And it has been a place where people have lost their shirts, particularly on the multi-side, on the development side, because of the aforementioned population loss, perception of crime, the taxing in Cook County.
Hiten Samtani (06:44)
was
pretty harsh on the city. mean, the last three years or so, there's been one bad headline after the other about the devastation in the, especially in the office market. The luxury sector hasn't fared very well either. Very publicly broke up with the city.
Will Krasne (06:56)
Ken Griffin has left as well.
Very publicly, yeah, it's not you, it's me. Actually, no, it's you. I don't love you anymore. Since when? Now. Just now. However, as folks have really been licking their wounds in the Sun Belt and some of the folks who are buying in this market right now are folks who then famously got their teeth kicked in in the Sun Belt in the last couple of years. They're buying because...
there's not really as much supply. You don't need a ton of population growth if you don't have supply. You just need enough. And there is enough. And obviously, Chicago has all the economic activity you could want. And just in the waning days of Q4 and more than half a billion dollars of multifamily transactions.
Hiten Samtani (07:38)
There's one particular one we want to get into first. So, AIMCO, which we've talked about, will had a pretty fun rant a few episodes ago about more reach at liquidate, right? Yes. AIMCO has been on that train for a bit. Good for them. They announced their intent to liquidate and then they've been selling off some big things. So, one mega transaction in Miami that just closed was Oak Row, closed on their $500 million plus dollar deal with AIMCO for a parcel on the Brickell waterfront. And our boy Vlad Daronin has just come in on that as well.
Will Krasne (08:06)
Would you rather have a couple thousand apartments in Chicago or one piece of dirt in Miami? Well.
Hiten Samtani (08:11)
We shall see. So that's one of their mega transactions. then another one, was honestly quite a shock to me. Laterra is stepping in here and paying what, 455 million, something like that.
Will Krasne (08:22)
Yeah, 4.55 scheduled to close, end of Q1.
Hiten Samtani (08:25)
How many units are we talking? Let's have a
1500 units, 300k a door, let's say roughly. So not a distressed thing or anything.
Will Krasne (08:35)
Funky.
Plus or minus, yeah.
No,
is a, AIMCO owns good stuff. So AIMCO, did give them their flowers for doing the right thing and liquidating, it is a little bit sad because that was, I think at one point, the largest or second largest department owner in the country. And it's just going to be gone. It is no longer.
Hiten Samtani (08:57)
for people who not be familiar. Our community is kind of, is a child of AIM.
Will Krasne (09:02)
Yeah. you had, yeah, you had air communities and then you had AIV.
Hiten Samtani (09:05)
And Air Communities, the defining apartment transaction of 2024, sold to Blackstone for 10 billion change. Yeah. And that's the one that gave everyone, quote, air cover to invest in multi-
Will Krasne (09:15)
Exactly,
which turned out to be not true. So, AIMCO, selling their good stuff. And again, I think the buyer is interesting because it's not a Blackstone, it's not an FPA, it's not a Courtland, it's Laterra. And Laterra's equity on this, Rest Park, is their equity? ⁓ I do not know, to be quite honest.
Hiten Samtani (09:30)
What is REST Park?
That sounds like an item for the promote that.
Will Krasne (09:35)
We always talk about how narrative drives valuation here and the vibe vibes really really matter. The vibes are much better and it's been backed up by the data. So apartment occupancy hit over 95 percent in mid 2025, which is way above what Chicago's 10 year average. Right. So and rents actually grew in 2025, which is a rarity nationally. I they're up four and a half percent year over year, which is the second fastest among the big U.S. metros. Compare that to what's gone on in Austin. Yeah. Parts of Florida.
Phoenix, Dallas.
Hiten Samtani (10:06)
I think that's a good point and also crucially, unlike some of the markets you just mentioned, Chicago's kind of avoided the boom and bust roller coaster on the multifamily side at least. It's not been the thing that you think about when you think of a ripping market, but it's just kind of continued.
Will Krasne (10:21)
It's a function of supply because again, we're looking for a supply demand imbalance and you can have amazing demand and amazing supply, a ton of supply and there's no imbalance. You can have like okay demand and no supply and a really good imbalance. And I think what we're seeing in Chicago is more the latter.
Hiten Samtani (10:37)
One good contrast to make maybe is with Austin where a supply kind of just went absolutely bananas and then rent started falling.
Will Krasne (10:44)
Also in Austin, you have the same problem you as since we had in Cook County with the taxing authority.
Hiten Samtani (10:49)
Well,
they also have the traveling HFC shenanigans there. This is true.
Will Krasne (10:53)
This
is very true. Interesting to see folks make big bets here. And speaking of the Sunbelt, there's a notorious Sunbelt investor, S2, who famously rode the last cycle, like one of the guys. I say like tides, obviously they had not had as many problems as tides.
Hiten Samtani (11:06)
I think we should be clear that Scott Everett's S2 has somehow managed to not only stay afloat, they're actually actively expanding, which kudos to Scott and whatever he's doing there.
Will Krasne (11:18)
all kudos to Scott because he had the same type of problems that other folks had and has worked through them and is now playing offense. So kudos to him. Yeah, interesting to see him make a huge leap into Chicago. Their head of acquisition said that they've been looking at this for a long time and they are diving in feet first, spending over a hundred million bucks.
Hiten Samtani (11:36)
This is what a 345 unit garden and lawn
Will Krasne (11:39)
Ovaltine
apartments which more Ovaltine, please. That's why I want all secret squadron members to drink Ovaltine every day. Yeah, it was the Ovaltine factory. Oh cool. We talk a lot about in real estate about cycles and The thing that seems like the sure bet at a certain moment in time is almost guaranteed to not be that's just how it is so whether it's Florida becoming a tech bubble tech
Hiten Samtani (12:02)
Actually, that slip is absolutely perfect.
Will Krasne (12:06)
or New York or LA or Chicago becoming uninvestable, these tides turn because at the end of the day, it's all about supply and demand. We overcomplicate this. Bad news means no supply, which means rent growth eventually. And that's sort of what we're seeing with Chicago. Like I said a little bit facetiously, would you rather have one dev site in Brickle or would you rather have 1,500 Class A apartments in Chicago? I know what I would take.
Hiten Samtani (12:35)
So, Will, you violate any dead covenants recently?
Will Krasne (12:39)
So funny you should ask. I have been in technical default recently. I mean, who among us? Right. But not since Q4. Ooh. And that's not because I paid off the loan. It's because that's when I started using Loan Boss.
Hiten Samtani (12:51)
I can't believe how old school some of our listeners are. They're still crunching DSCRs in Excel and all that.
Will Krasne (12:57)
Total waste of time, risky business to boot. Loan Boss runs the entire process for me. One click covenant testing, incredible. Instant cashflow forecasting, impeccable. And my favorite nerdy delight, the live forward curve. So I hate having to go download the forward curve and then it's always vertical and you gotta alt HVT to have it go horizontal. Make sure the index match works, like ridiculous.
Hiten Samtani (13:20)
It just got it sorted here for-
Will Krasne (13:22)
Much better. So thank you, lone boss.
Hiten Samtani (13:25)
Listeners, check them out at Loanboss.com. That's Loanboss.com. And tell them the promo sent you. ⁓
Will Krasne (13:44)
So the Chief's got a massive public funding package to build a new stadium.
Hiten Samtani (13:48)
It's unbelievable how big a gimme this is. Stupendous.
Will Krasne (13:52)
I know, man, and the state of Kansas, and I know the Kansas City Chiefs played in Missouri, just rolled with it. It's okay, they're moving back to Kansas. Stadiums broadly and the surrounding real estate have become massive profit generators for teams and their owners. And it's funny because there's so much talk about how these teams keep increasing their valuations. And a lot of that is due to the real estate surrounding the team itself. If you look at the Chase Center in San Francisco, I they're hotels from Starboard Capital Group.
You've got the battery in Atlanta. It's a who's who of real estate developers. And a lot of this is based on big, big you.
Hiten Samtani (14:26)
Huge
public subsidies. think this is what we're talking here about a north of $2 billion package that's coming in. There's some unibond goodness here as well as there always is.
Will Krasne (14:34)
real money.
Again, the Chiefs are owned by the Hunt family, like one of the richest families in America. And by the way, speaking of silver going crazy recently, I highly recommend everyone go Google Bunker Hunt Silver. Really, really good. But what we really wanted to talk about, and one of the reasons why we love doing this podcast is everything's real estate. Yeah. The Chiefs, Bob Kraft supporting MLS.
Hiten Samtani (14:47)
Okay?
Will Krasne (14:59)
Like all of this is real estate. The CIM backed revamp of Atlanta's downtown. All of these things are about real estate because you don't just make money off the team. You don't make money just off the streaming revenue. Those don't support the valuations. What supports it is the other 150 nights a year when you can have Bad Bunny or whomever in concert. You can have professional bull riding. You can have all of these other things that just print money. Cause you have huge fixed costs. the more...
folks you can get in there, they can stay at the hotels nearby, they can shop at the shops, and these things can really serve as catalysts.
Hiten Samtani (15:32)
funny is I just did a thing for the B1M on the line in Saudi Arabia. And the line's been calling them anchor assets, right? Basically an asset that is incredibly expensive and complex, but then can catalyze development and activity around the area. In Saudi Arabia's case, maybe a bit of a mixed bag, but it generally has been a huge economic driver for real estate, at least in functioning American cities.
Will Krasne (15:58)
DC is a huge example. So I grew up in the Nationals playing at RFK Stadium. They got Nationals Park over in Southeast and that area was bleak. Is putting it politely in now. It's like the yuppified, gentrified apartment communities everywhere with.
Hiten Samtani (16:13)
Look
at Barclay
Will Krasne (16:15)
Same
thing, I lived right next door to it for quite some time. And these, they can be really catalytic, but especially if you own all of it around.
Hiten Samtani (16:22)
one point we should make is that the ROI seems to be quite handsome for everyone except the public.
Will Krasne (16:28)
It never really does seem to work out. You go back to any given Wednesday when Bill Simpons' show came out and the commercials were like, I believe billionaires should pay for their own sports stadiums.
Hiten Samtani (16:38)
What I think developers understand about politics is like you need to be, a politician who's running for office again, you need to be seen to be building stuff to realize improvements in your community that are very visible. And even though that politician probably knows it's going to be an absolute money spilling exercise, you're the guy who brought the stadium to the community. Like there's something to that, right?
Will Krasne (16:59)
Yeah, and these teams are like part of the public trust, right? And so they can, we talk about billionaire flight from certain areas, these teams threaten to move all the time too. And it's like, you don't build us a stadium, we're gonna go. And yeah, the ROI is not great, but you what else is also not great? The cults leaving Baltimore. Yeah. It's so funny, because I think about this relative to the cable deals, like you can't afford to do it, but you can't also afford to not do it.
Hiten Samtani (17:25)
One particular area that's fascinating to me is Atlanta. We've talked about Atlanta before on this podcast when we talked about the OG Tom Cousins, but Centennial Yards is a great example of all this economic activity around a sports anchor development. So the brothers, the Ressler are teaming up on that one. It's Richard Dressler, the head of CIM Group, and somehow his more successful brother, Tony.
I just think about this all the time. Imagine being the founder of CIM and being the less successful brother. That's great.
Will Krasne (17:55)
Well, mean, Tony, Tony Ressler could be a baggage handler and he'd be more successful because he married Jamie Gertz.
Hiten Samtani (18:01)
This is very true. So Tony co-founded Apollo and founded Aries as well. And he owns the Hawks too.
Will Krasne (18:07)
He does in a consortium with many other people including Grant Hill. Yeah. cool. Grant Hill's in there. They turn that whole area in Centennial Arts. The Hawks and the Falcons stadiums are adjacent to it and completely shifts the center of gravity.
Hiten Samtani (18:10)
The Magic Player?
Yeah, and again, they're getting half a billion dollars plus of muni bonds, obviously, right? You can't make these things. Some of the most successful large-scale developers are also some of those people who really understand the political machinations of financing things like this. We've spent a whole episode kind of talking about related and Hudson Yards and how they unlocked these incredible sources of financing, city, state, wherever you can think of, EB5, Israeli money, all of that.
What gets financed gets built. And I think the most successful stadium developers understand that.
Will Krasne (18:52)
gets financed by non-financial institutions.
Hiten Samtani (18:57)
Very, very important clarification. Thank you. One thing I wanted to say about the Centennial Yards makeup, which I think is fascinating and kind of a sign of where this stuff is going is you have your traditional stadiums, right? You've got the Hawks and the Falcons. Then you've got Cosom. Have you been to Cosom? I think you'll really dig it.
Will Krasne (19:14)
have not.
Frankly, I wasn't really familiar with it before you put it on the docket.
Hiten Samtani (19:19)
I you'd really dig it. I went for a football game. I don't even like football. I went to a Ducks game there. It is immersive, man. It is as close to the real thing as you can get. It's probably a lot more comfortable. So the way that these things are happening is like you've got the real stadium for the live experience. You've got Cosm, which is kind of your next best thing for the corporate events and all that. And then you've got a whole smorgasbord of retail, F &B and all that. Right? Like that's the model here.
Will Krasne (19:45)
Would you say that it's live, play?
Hiten Samtani (19:48)
No.
Will Krasne (19:51)
This is one of these types of stories that if I say look for a red car, you see red cars everywhere.
Hiten Samtani (19:55)
I should confess friend of the pod Ian Ross, Ian had sent me this Kansas City thing like a couple weeks ago. I was like, it's infrastructure, not really our thing. But then you put it in the dock and I'm like, f*** guy, he was right.
Will Krasne (20:06)
These are a list of other things that are going on right now. So, Kraft Group struck a $140 million deal with Boston and Everett for a new soccer stadium for MLS. So, MLS, like the ninth biggest sport in America. Philadelphia 76ers are trying to build a new stadium in downtown Philly. David Adelman, who's one of the owners, runs a student housing company. He's leading the charge there. Hugely acrimonious with the city about parking, location, all those things.
The commanders, DC is giving $1.1 billion towards a fund to get them back from Maryland because they were in Landover forever. I'm actually not sure off the top of my head. I think that DC again, giving up the ghost a little bit. Chase Center in San Francisco just happened. We mentioned the battery in Atlanta. Basically, any time you see a big sports team sell now.
Hiten Samtani (20:37)
Which developers are in the mix there?
You
can see the real estate developers kind of go, yeah. The best position to be in is being an actual developer who owns a sports team. Steve Ross, right?
Will Krasne (21:00)
Steve Ross. mean, this was in the teams now themselves, a lot of the value, as we mentioned at the top, is from the real estate itself, because you make money on days that the team's not playing. And so owning all that real estate is really, really important, especially for franchise value.
Hiten Samtani (21:14)
This was kind Dan Doctoroff initial claim to fame. right. He wanted to build that stadium on the west side of Manhattan. Exactly. the stadium didn't come to Ferocious, and I think he wanted it for the Olympics. That didn't come together. But apparently, all the legwork and all the conversations that Dan and his team had around the stadium eventually catalyzed in this incredibly massive and very successful mega project for Related called Hudson Yards.
Will Krasne (21:20)
Hudson Yards ultimately ended right
These things take more than a village, they take almost a nation state. And so you need the nation state type guys to get it done. And that's Dan Doctoroff that's related.
Hiten Samtani (21:51)
But it all starts with a dream in a ballpark.
Will Krasne (21:53)
Indeed.
Hiten Samtani (22:02)
We've talked about this portfolio before, but they've just pulled off the thing that we thought they would pull off. Carlyle and Greenbrook have just got a close to $500 million dollar refi on their walk-up portfolio in Brooklyn, like this empire of walk-ups. They all fall under that 2A, 2B tax class designation. And I think it's really interesting. Generally been fascinated at the promote with institutionalizing the formerly uninstitutional, right? That's a big theme of this podcast. And they've done it and they've done it via Freddie Mac. So pretty interesting deal.
Will Krasne (22:33)
Absolutely. think at a high level, the most interesting thing to me is that they did this refi, which Freddie Mac loans. I mean, I don't know whether they're a floater or not, but this means they're staying in it for a while. Cash flow must be good. They think there's further juice on the bone here because you don't refi and then immediately turn around to sell. So they're going to be in this for a little while longer. Maybe they're going to go back and buy more.
Hiten Samtani (22:51)
And
what's the prize here? It's odd properties, just over thousand units, nicer neighborhoods than Brooklyn. It's just-
Will Krasne (22:57)
Like a 500k unit debt basis, I mean, I get it. It's like these rents are really good. They're all free market. They're all tax class 2A2B. Generally like really good micro locations. Man, that's just a big number, you know?
Hiten Samtani (23:10)
Well, mean, Brooklyn's only going one way, right, when it comes to red. Yeah. These are like yuppie neighborhoods.
Will Krasne (23:15)
Absolutely. Though we'll see what comrade Mamdani has to say about that with his executive orders about streamlining.
Hiten Samtani (23:22)
I'm
preparing something now, but we're going to talk soon about this whole pinnacle
Will Krasne (23:26)
Yeah,
I almost put that in this week, but I want to more digest.
Hiten Samtani (23:30)
It's quite interesting. was looking at the bankruptcy docket late last night because I'm a loser like that. Anyway, so Freddie hasn't historically financed, I was talking to some insiders in the deal. Freddie hasn't historically financed buildings that are under six units. Carlyle and Greenbrook had to put in some work.
Will Krasne (23:45)
here. Definitely. mean, the SPL program I think is great, provides a ton of liquidity for smaller assets. And again, SPL I think is six million and lower for Fannie and nine million and lower for Freddie. I think that's right.
Hiten Samtani (23:57)
be clear, we're not sure which specific Freddie product was in the mix here. It could be the linked portfolio thing. We're not clear, so we're not gonna get into all of that.
Will Krasne (24:06)
Historically, you do is you either go to a bank or you go to Fanny, Freddie, SBL. Fanny, Freddie, SBL also was where a lot of the fraud took place. Not the best financing or financial records, not the best management. bringing in that type of back office and talent to this, with Carlyle and Greenbrook, you're able to push the limits and get this type of execution. even if you were, think, like who's that guy in Red Hook, the former cop who owns several hundred million dollars with a real
Hiten Samtani (24:35)
I know who you're talking about, I don't know that name.
Will Krasne (24:37)
Yeah,
like that guy couldn't go get a Freddie SPL. Like that's the stuff you need like a Carlyle and a real capital markets team like beating up Freddie for.
Hiten Samtani (24:45)
Yeah. From a management perspective, this is probably a good thing because Freddie historically is known to take due diligence, building violations, all that stuff very seriously. So if they've gone and done it through Freddie, fair to assume the stewardship will be probably pretty good here. No.
Will Krasne (25:03)
That's a good thing. They were very specific with their buy box. They were not doing the turnarounds. They were buying from the guys who did the turnarounds.
Hiten Samtani (25:10)
And that's a very important point. They only bought market rates. of the units, some of the buildings that they bought became market rate through something known as the sub rehab. Correct. That is right.
Will Krasne (25:19)
And I think they stopped buying that. Because
of the paperwork issues and things like that that other landlords in Brooklyn are facing.
Hiten Samtani (25:26)
That's correct. With Freddie playing this space, it sort of creates an opportunity to finance these things because as NYCB retreated, Signature Bank went under, there were fewer and fewer options for landlords to finance portfolios like this. So if the agencies are coming in, that's a pretty good sign.
Will Krasne (25:44)
It's a very good sign and there a lot of these types of portfolios that exist, not necessarily with this institutional sponsorship. if that's available for folks, those generational portfolios, you might see trade. We talk about how the debt markets really drive liquidity. And anytime you have a geography or a product that was not getting the most liquid debt markets, that's where pricing wasn't always peak. And that's where it was harder to sell things. And the fact that you can now get agency financing for this type of portfolio at this type of scale.
You're going to see more, not only going to see more of these types of transactions, you're going to see a lot more of these types of financings for existing folks because they're going to go say, hey, Carlyle and Greenbrook did this. I've owned these forever. I've managed them better. Yeah. Why can't I?
Hiten Samtani (26:39)
That's it for the Promote Podcast this week. The Wendy City has quietly gained tailwinds that are pushing serious capital in. A Brooklyn Walk-Up Empire refi means more institutional players may schlep to Freddie for cash. And sports stadiums could be a goldmine for those who know how to play the system.
Will Krasne (26:55)
Shout out again to our sponsor Loan Boss. Be like me, stay out of default, technical and otherwise, by checking out their CRE debt management platform.
Hiten Samtani (27:03)
find them at Loanboss.com
Will Krasne (27:05)
And remember, leave us a review on Apple. Write us with feedback and ideas at podcastthepromote.com and give us compliments on our looks on YouTube and Instagram at 1031 TV. And also thank you, Joe Fingerman. Amazing review. Made my week.
Hiten Samtani (27:19)
I love that review by the way. Joe is a former top dog at Signature Bank and he called us the new Lois Weiss and Charlie Bagley in a listenable format, which I thought was tremendous.
Will Krasne (27:29)
Well done, Joe.
Hiten Samtani (27:31)
We'll be back next week with more CRE Insider goodness. William, thank you dude. Ciao.
Will Krasne (27:35)
Thank you.