Latest / The Promote Podcast / Inside the Lending Game with Ran Eliasaf & Adam Neumann's Divine Flow
Transcript
- Will Krasne (00:00) What if you didn't have to make money in real estate to make money in real estate? Hiten Samtani (00:06) It's not even a Zen koan You're thinking about that for a reason. Flow. We're talking about flow. Adam Neumann does it again. Every time you think the guy is going under, he goes and raises more money. It's inexplicable at this point. It's kind of mystical. It is, as Adam Neumann says, a feeling. Welcome back to the Promote Podcast, your insider guide to the money and mania in the CRE markets. I'm Hiten Samtani here as always with Will Krasne. Will Krasne (00:09) I'm talking about. What's up? Hiten Samtani (00:35) at this point like this is no longer a fluke he's just done this over and over again talking obviously about adam and flo Will Krasne (00:38) It's just on another level. Top ticks it, walks with a billion of equity, then Top ticks the multi-market and you think he's gonna finally have his comeuppance? Absolutely not. Hiten Samtani (00:53) It really feels like he's playing a completely different game than the rest of you. You guys try to make the numbers work on individual deals. He just goes and raises more money. We break down the latest with his new venture flow. It's looking for rescue prep all over the place, but his investors don't seem to care. Also, we have a real treat for you today. Last week, we broke down the hella convoluted cap stack of super tall skyscraper 125 Granite Street. Today, Northwind Group's Ran Eliasaf joins us to talk about the deal. Ran provided the 300 million plus financing to the sponsors in 2023. He was just taken out by Starwood and he takes us through how big loans like this come together. A shout out to our sponsor for this episode, AirGarage. It's a full service smart parking management solution. So, we'll, we have been talking quite a bit about 125 Greenwich. It is again, for both of us, probably our favorite project in terms of cast of characters. You've had everyone from Howard Michaels to Nick Mastrioni to Michael Shvo to Davide Bitsy, Howard Lorber, Howard Lorber as well. And we're really lucky because we had a chance to sit down with Ran Eliasaf Ran is the founder of Northwind Group, a big lender in the space. They're the ones who kind of recapitalized the project and resurrected it in 2023 when Fortress came in as kind of the primary equity. converting their debt stake into an equity stake, Starwood came in. The reason we talked about the story now is Starwood Property Trust with a $350 million loan and took Northwind out. And Ran gave us a great, really interesting breakdown about his business, about this project, but I think just in general about the business of debt funds and lending. Will Krasne (02:26) Absolutely, great get I had nothing to do with it. Thank you for getting him on here. Hiten Samtani (02:30) I was just, I really was fascinated by this deal. So I posted on LinkedIn and I tagged a bunch of people and Ran replied with like heart eyes. I'm like, okay, sounds like he's interested. So I DMed him and next week we were on with him. Quick note on our conversation with Ran. He's talking about deals from funds that have already closed, i.e. not funds that are actively raising. That's an important disclaimer. And we also want to say obviously that nothing discussed here constitutes investment advice. Will Krasne (02:54) and nothing is an offering or solicitation to buy our cell securities. Hiten Samtani (02:58) is correct. So what jumped out at you about the conversation? Will Krasne (03:03) It was really, he took something that was very complicated, had a lot of history, and you could have come to it with a lot of baggage. He had fresh eyes and really thought about it in a simple way. Simple, but not easy. You hear him talk about, here's how we get our analysis, here are the things that were important to us, here's how we made the decision to go forward, and you look at their outcome and it's pretty spectacular for a dead investment. Ran Eliasaf (03:27) I mean, 1.5 Vantage, I think is an interesting example because we thought it was a project that was really misunderstood by the market. And it kind of had the stigma, ⁓ we'll never be completed. And honestly, it was a very messy cap stack prior to when we and Fortress stepped in, right? You had three basically developers and convoluted. You know, lender structure with some, you know, for even Chinese capital and all the place. then when we started looking at it, was really for fortress or fortress. think the kind of the heavy lift of cleaning up the cap stack after they bought the debt. Hiten Samtani (04:09) Just on that, so there was Sindat, Howard Lorber, Michael Schro at some point, Sardar, was Michael Schro's other partner, Davide Bizi, and EB5 Money, right? Am I getting the gist of it? Ran Eliasaf (04:23) ⁓ you know, if you want to go back to the earlier days, I think it was Fisher brothers and I'm blanking on his name that tied up the deal initially and then with Lorber, Beatsy, know, then the sin that coming in as quasi equity, quasi death. It was a very, you know, then she exited obviously actually perfect timing for him. Great. love Michael. Great. Will Krasne (04:28) I think that's right. Ran Eliasaf (04:49) Yeah. And then obviously COVID and everything there. And then the building found itself stuck, right? Then basically 70 % completed that. That was kind of the right number. So, you know, it was interesting. Super structured done. Facade basically done as well. All the, you know, exterior work done and about a third of the units had finishes, know, kitchens, baths, tiles. So, so when we looked at it, we said, you know what, let's quantify what it would really cost to complete. And, and it wasn't. I mean, it was complicated because it was large, but it wasn't really complicated to get to the number eventually and to price it. I think Fortress, when they bought it from me three and then ended up with, you know, stalled foreclosure during COVID, they couldn't really foreclose. And they actually gave them a lot of time to clean everything up. And when it was presented again with, you know, Plaza Construction as the GC, it was a pretty clear path to completion. Hiten Samtani (05:45) For the people who may not be as familiar with the note on note financing process, so you got 220 odd million from Madison Realty Capital. How has that process changed over time? know Madison has been, Josh has been talking quite a bit about really pushing that product as one of his big kind of strategic pillars for Madison. Can you just talk a little bit about that process, how it plays into your overall strategy as a lender? Ran Eliasaf (06:09) Sure. mean, when we look at our credit book, about two thirds of our loan, we keep unleveraged, no warehouse line, no repo line and no individual leverage or a note. So we hold the paper in its entirety. And then about a third of our positions where we feel really comfortable with our LTV and basis and this specific loan, 125 Runech, we're really at 43 % LTV. So at 43 % LTV, mean, we were at 970 a foot. A sponsor thought they'll sell at 2200 a foot. They're selling close to that number. Right. So we felt that 43 % LTV to Fortress with the amount of cash equity they had in the deal, which was almost, you know, 400 million of cash equity. We felt comfortable selling an A note. You know, Madison gave a great execution and it was a great partnership for us and them here. The leverage turned this loan for us. We're earning 24 % on our BP. Hiten Samtani (07:01) That's like a default interest rate. Wow. It's pretty good. So for our listeners Ran is running us through his ⁓ is basically his case study on the loans pretty great You generally don't get to see this kind of stuff. So it's great to see go ahead Ran Eliasaf (07:17) So we originated in the February 23, we'll repaid this April, know, Starwood just came in with, you know, 350 million. Our loan, this is actual numbers. We actually earned 24.7 IRR. We actually made 33.8 million of profit, 1.5 multiple out of 27 month duration at 970 foot. And this is kind of how the building looked when we gave the loan. Hiten Samtani (07:41) I can see Will's eyes getting bigger and bigger as we're watching. This is great. Will Krasne (07:45) This is actually a real moick, which you see a lot of folks saying, yeah, my IR is tremendous, and I made a 1-1. This is actually a real multiple on a real equi- Ran Eliasaf (07:57) This loan ended up being outstanding there for 27 months. We actually thought it will be 30 months. We got paid a little bit early. All good. Hiten Samtani (08:08) We wanted to give a shout out to our sponsor for this episode, Air Garage. Air Garage is a full service parking management solution with brains. Goodbye gate arms and ticket dispensers, hello QR code based payments, and license plate reading cameras. For drivers, that means ease. For owners, it means an NOI boost. And unlike other parking operators, all Air Garage's tech is built in-house, so it actually works. Go to airgarage.com/promote to learn more. That's airgarage.com/promote. Well, on the LTV point, think he makes a really interesting point. We're going to jump to that tape. But his whole thing was Manhattan real estate. Like, how much can it actually drop value, right? And this is, I guess, the primary problem to figure out when you're a lender. Yep. How much do you think values will go up or down? Ran Eliasaf (08:56) This is the toughest thing to underwrite and there's no, it's an art, not a science, it's the LTV. You know, what is the true value of real estate? It's like anything. It's only what someone is willing to pay for, right? Whatever someone that's the real value and until then you don't know. So we prefer focusing on supply constraint markets like New York City, where the value tends, at least at residential, to be a little bit more predictable and stable. It's hard to see, I mean, it could happen, but hard to see, you know, Rezzi values in New York dropping 30, 40 % overnight, right? So our entire thesis is landing on primarily residential, primarily in New York City and other major markets where we feel there's supply constraints. So prices could change, but unless something terrible happens, like a negative macro or God forbid, terror attack. It's the changes happen, but they're slower and you see them. Yes, prices in the city can drop 10%. It happened in the past. It will happen in the future, but not 30, 40%. So when we're at a credit, we want to be in a more protected position and have that margin of safety. The second thing, you kind of touch on it, we're not a mega large fund. We're kind of midsize. And we we participate half of our position to our LP is we can do a large transactions, but we don't have. a huge amount of money burning a hole in our pockets, forcing us to lend so we can be a bit more selective on the type of assets, type of sponsors and type of situations we want to be in. Will Krasne (10:28) One thing I've admired about your career is that you've been able to adjust as the market has adjusted over time and focusing on how you're able to originate things because there's always a view that if stuff's going out to the market, you're going to get market returns unless you have a differentiated view on either the underlying fundamentals or something specific to the asset. In this case, I mean, this sounds like they went wide. Do you focus mostly on those types of opportunities or are there folks you have, I mean, it seems like you have quite a bit of repeat relationships. So you have folks where you're the Go to call. Ran Eliasaf (11:00) Our statistics have been so far about 50 % direct lending kind of from relationships and 50 % from market. But honestly, even with direct relationships, sometimes there is a broker involved that obviously everyone wants to pay less for the mortgage, right? For the loan. And you know, the internal joke is that relationships are good probably for 50 dips. And then if somebody comes in at 50 dips inside, then they go with them and that's fine. That's healthy. I mean, it means we're in a sophisticated market. So about A year ago, we started leaning into office to raise the conversions. We were one of the first jobs to kind of do provide acquisition bridge and construction loans to office to raise the conversions. Again, just seeing the lack of new supply and the need. You know, when you run an equity fund, you can afford the bad deal because you'll have a home run deal, right? So hopefully you'll have so home run dealable can cover up for a few mediocre or even a bad deal. And in that fund, you can't one bad deal kills the returns of seven other good deals, right? So it's all about. not making mistakes. My job as a credit fund manager is to avoid the bad ones or try to avoid the bad ones, right? Because there's no home run view. Will Krasne (12:07) Hearing a lender go through this explicitly was fascinating. I think it shows why he's been so successful because investing is all about uncertainty and so if you have false precision that's what leads to a rye. Hiten Samtani (12:22) which obviously happened in office for example where lenders even at their worst case could not have predicted that the kind of just the primary thing which is like people need to go into the office that fundamental pillar was shook. Will Krasne (12:35) third up and it was littered with a carcass of downside protected LTD lending. And what I think too is really interesting is that he's so specific. On the equity side, you can take a little bit more risk because you can make it up elsewhere because you have uncapped upside. Whereas on the debt side, if you have one bad deal, can nuk your old fund. You're gone. You're wiped. So he is hyper focused both on product type, residential and location New York. Hiten Samtani (12:52) You're go- Will Krasne (13:01) And even within that, allows you to be a sharpshooter. It allows you to know who the sponsors are that can make stuff happen. You know the markets intimately, even blocked. Hiten Samtani (13:11) And I'm not a baseball guy, but I am a cricket guy. And I guess the way to think about it is you're not hitting fours and sixes, you're going for singles and doubles here, right? That's a consistent singles and doubles you want to make when you're lending as opposed to your equity investments. Will Krasne (13:25) Yeah, on the equity side, you can have a wicked or two, but you need to protect your wickets on the debt side. But I think what's really important to here too is that they are focused on making stuff happen. They're not looking for reasons to say no once they decide. They make the decision to go and then they go. And that sounds very simple, but it's not something that happens all the time. Hiten Samtani (13:31) Well done. He said something interesting, he said, until now, and they've done this for a number of years now, they haven't taken a property back. Ran Eliasaf (13:52) we're known to be more flexible. We work with the bars. We've never taken back a property to date. We'll do this long enough, it will happen, right? We've been doing it since 2017 on the credit side and have not yet. And we've seen the COVID crisis and we've seen rising interest rate crisis. Will Krasne (14:08) Yeah, they've been through a couple of periods of distress and haven't had to take anything back. So I think that's pretty impressive. Or you could say they're not putting on enough risk. That's the other way to think about it. Hiten Samtani (14:18) What else jumped out about him? think one of the coolest things from the conversation is when you guys talk about it's a different business. I mean, you have to organize your company completely differently when it comes to being a lender versus being an equity investor. Will Krasne (14:34) It's a tremendous difference just in terms of documentation, how you set up operationally, like your org charts, like having blocker entities, all these different things. When you do the first one, how do you figure that out? Ran Eliasaf (14:47) documentation, listen, learning. can't compare to our loan docs today to what we've done eight, nine years ago, right? Learned, adapted, implemented conclusions that we've done a long way, but still trying to be nimble and not have a hundred page loan document, right? We try to put our loan docs under 50 pages. Will Krasne (15:06) Yeah, that's admirable. I'm looking at an assumption right now and it's a 147 page loan doc for just a very down the middle multi-deal. And you know what they say, nothing ruins a great deal like a good lawyer. Hiten Samtani (15:18) Ran Eliasaf from Northwind, thank you so much for being with The Promote. Ran Eliasaf (15:23) Thank you for having me. Hiten Samtani (15:27) You know, this kind of color from a lender directly telling you how the sausage is made is the kind of stuff you only find on the promote podcast. Will Krasne (15:34) The other reason that I love what we do at Hiten is that we have the most very buttoned up, great risk adjusted returns focused on downside protection, strict underwriting, narrow focused discipline. then, and then we just have a feeling. Hiten Samtani (15:49) You just have a feeling and sometimes that's all you need. And I'm talking obviously about Adam and Flo. Okay, let's talk flow. Well, I remember when I was covering WeWork, someone would write a really good article or discover something about its shaky finances and show kind of the cracks in the model. And Adam Neumann would basically almost as a fuck you just go and raise more money again. He just kept doing this over and over and he would raise a big chunk of money and a fast company wet kiss or a Forbes wet kiss would come out simultaneously. That was it. That was his playbook. And it seems like with his new venture flow, which is a quote unquote, multifamily investor, he seems to be doing it again. Will Krasne (16:29) My dad once said that good looks and charm are not marketable skills and I just completely disagree because that's literally all Adam has and it's taken him a long way. And what's crazy is that everyone bought the same deals, they're looking for preff, maybe the mistake they've made was not valuing their hold co at way more money than they did two years ago. mean, this is kind of genius. Hiten Samtani (16:53) Let's put some numbers on this. So he's gone and raised a hundred million at a two and a half billion dollar valuation, which means that flow is now worth more than twice what it was just a year or a couple of years. Will Krasne (17:04) And to be clear, this is a 16 Z re upping. And honestly, my view of this is that it shows that Mark Andreessen is still somewhat of a human being because it's his like payback for not allowing people to build apartments near his Tony Enclave. But he still has a shred of humanity and is just thinking, you know what, let me help this plucky guy trying to make affordable housing, quote unquote, work. Hiten Samtani (17:30) Well, we should talk about the Andreessen investment. So he had a prior investment of $350 million into Flow. Now this is when Flow was formed. And this is important. This was the single largest check that A16Z had ever written into a company in one single round. But, but, but this wasn't a standard, you know, cash for equity check, which is your standard VC playbook. As part of this convoluted deal, A16Z took a stake in the actual properties. And that's what kind of set this apart. Will Krasne (17:58) Well, it's a little bit refreshing that they lost money there too, not just at the alco level. So good for them. I mean, again, everyone knows this, but it is just fantastic that Mark Andreessen's wife is the daughter of the father of Silicon Valley, John Ariaga. Hiten Samtani (18:13) also has a connection then to A &E because the A in A &E is the son of that guy as well. That is correct. Yeah. So let's talk both on the VC side and on the real estate side. On the VC side, can we now definitively say that Adam Neumann is the greatest fundraiser in the history of capital? Will Krasne (18:30) depends on how you define fundraising because Alexander the Great just took everyone's money. ⁓ So technically that's fundraising but I mean someone who does it legally yeah I mean he's got to be up there it's just incredible the velocity of capital he's raised in this period of time I mean think of how long it took John Gray or it took Steve Schwartzman to raise what are four billion dollars of investor equity capital and Neumann just did that in like two years. Ran Eliasaf (18:36) any man or god before Hiten Samtani (18:57) And he transitions from talking about numbers to talking about these more mystical, when he described flow at a recent event that TRD did, he talked about the company as quote, a feeling, right? And he's able to do this kind of thing and investors still line up to give him money to quote. Will Krasne (19:11) the poet Boston, it's more than a feeling. Ran Eliasaf (19:15) you Hiten Samtani (19:16) Okay, okay, now on the real estate side. So these are big multifamily properties bought at the top of the market. So 21, 22, et cetera. He had a family office that I think spent about a billion dollars putting together 4,000 units in kind of prime markets, Atlanta, Nashville, et cetera, and floating rate debt for the most part, right? So he's bought at the very top of the market, is not an operator. And now a lot of these deals are lining up for rescue prefs. So Cortland, which is a A big multifamily player in Atlanta is looking to invest a pref Beeson in a Buckhead tower. And I'm hearing that there's a lot more deals where that came from, sort of pref rescue deals. Will Krasne (19:55) Well, let's not forget the real reason that he did this, which is that he got paid a billion of equity that was taxable earned income from his WeWork parachute and he manages to put a billion of equity into multifamily with a hundred percent bonus. So I'm sure on an AfriTax basis, he's actually still well ahead. Hiten Samtani (20:03) from as we were at Golden Parachute? So he's going into these properties, he buys them. There's a lot of, let's call them issues in the property management. So at the Buckhead Tower that's in play right now, he's changed property managers at least three times. That's bad. Yeah. And on the other properties, the Nashville property, he's been underwater on that debt for a while. At some point, do investors not ask about the assets within the company when they're funding the company? I'm not quite understanding the disconnect here. Will Krasne (20:47) ⁓ I have no idea what the VCs are doing. I mean, it makes no sense. This headline would have made a lot more sense in 2021, to be honest. It's kind of embarrassing that you're doing this now. The thing is, that everyone's kind of chasing the dragon of, know, multifamily VC type situations, which you look at real estate, you think this stuff's wrong. Excel, the existing PM softwares don't work. The idea of having a branded concept makes sense. You just can't do it at this scale. But at the end of the day, like the properties have to work well. The reason why the Cortland brand is strong is because they've made money and they manage the properties well and they brought a good resonant experience. Steve DeFrancis does the podcast circuit. He's on the Walker podcast. He's on investing with legends or whatever the real estate show, but he's not talking about feelings. like, you know what really makes our operations better? The fact that I vertically integrated the entire multifamily system and I can go source my own granite for all the 15,000 counter-dockers renovations we do a year. Hiten Samtani (21:54) What is the delta between a very good operator and a great operator in multifamily real estate? Like, are we talking, if someone operates the hell out of a property, how much extra NOI can they juice out of it? And I'm not comparing it with like a nightmare operator, just someone who's like decent at it. Will Krasne (22:09) I think the best comparison is like Formula One, there's always, how much is the car, how much is the driver? And then you ask, it's like, it's like 70, 30 car driver. And honestly, I think it's kind of like that for multifamily. Like the most important thing is buy it good basis in a market that's growing and then you can do a lot to screw it up and still do well. People aren't miracle workers. They can't turn something around. But the difference is all on the margins and in the edge cases. So it's not even so much like how much additional NOI, it's like, what's the ROI there? You know, I'm not a prostit. I want to win the race as slow as possible and in multifamily, it's I want to make as much money as possible while spending as little as possible while making the residents as happy as possible. There's a third variable in there, too. Hiten Samtani (22:51) The language you're using is the language of efficiency and venture exits are not really efficient plays. These are moonshots. You have to do something extraordinary to get the kind of return that warrants a venture investment. That's where the disconnect to me is quite strong here. Even if Adam Neumann or a flow was good at this and they're not, they're not good at managing property. Will Krasne (23:13) They're not even managing properties or asset managing the properties. can't even do that right. Hiten Samtani (23:17) Yeah, yeah. And they have, it's pretty messy internally. So you remember this guy called Mark Lapidus? Of course. So Adam Neumann's brother-in-law, former WeWork Global Head of Real Estate, controversial character within that company too. Apparently he's the guy doing everything and there's too much to do. So he's just kind of like headless chicken running around trying to manage this whole portfolio. And it's a huge portfolio. Will Krasne (23:38) Yeah, mean, this is real money. This is, you know, nine figures of equity, real assets. That's the one thing I should say is that these are actually pretty good assets. But again, you can't the quality of the real estate isn't the hard part. You don't have to be Sam Zell to walk around and be like, that's good real estate. Everyone can do that. That's table stakes. The whole game is buying mispriced risk. So buying something that's worth more than you paid for it, not just buying something good. Hiten Samtani (24:03) alluded to this before, right? Like you've got to find the alpha in places where other people would not look. Will Krasne (24:09) 100%. And there's a time to buy Class A stuff, there's a time to buy Class B stuff, and this was not the time to buy Class A stuff. Hiten Samtani (24:17) If you're Adam Neumann, and again, it's hard for us to put ourselves in that, in his shoes or in his bare feet more accurately because he's just doing it at a different level, a completely different game, but what do you do with this hundred million that just came in? Are you buying more stuff with it? Wavepool? Will Krasne (24:32) Yeah, I was going to say what layered Hamilton company can he buy related to real estate? Hiten Samtani (24:37) But is there a possibility here that A16Z is essentially again juicing this company to find an exit after they've probably lost a decent amount of money on this investment? Will Krasne (24:47) I mean, A16Z now at this point, they have so much money that they're not really a venture firm anymore. They're just an asset manager. So Andreessen is doing the same thing. They've raised a gazillion dollars for crypto. They've raised a ton of money for late stage. They're doing some public stuff. They're not like a VC firm anymore. They're an asset manager. Hiten Samtani (25:05) Right, and they have kind of hitched their wagon here to Flow, which is Adam Neumann's new vehicle. After WeWork, we didn't know what he was going to do. It turns out he came back into real estate via the multifamily segment. He thought he'd create a brand because then you got to give credit here. WeWork is a great office brand. The financials of the company just didn't work, but the product is pretty good. Will Krasne (25:24) the name was great and the brand was great. And frankly, think Flow is a great name. Hiten Samtani (25:28) What was an amazing name? It rhymes with Adam Neumann's whole vibe, but he has pumped a billion plus into acquiring this portfolio. Terrible timing for most people, but for him, he's again figured out a way to make this work. Will Krasne (25:42) For Adam Neumann, Tom's Flat Circle. Hiten Samtani (25:49) That's it for the Promote Podcast this week. Adam Neumann and Flow, I mean, he does it completely different than anyone else. People do not try to replicate Adam Neumann because he really is one of one, but even while he's searching for rescue preff, he's able to go and raise more money for his hold code. Will Krasne (26:04) I mean, like Harley Rage Epson said, he cuts to the feeling. Hiten Samtani (26:08) And we're really happy this week to have that conversation with Ran from Northwind. It's the kind of behind the scenes playbook into the business of the business that the promote is obsessed with. So it was very cool for Ran to take the time to join us. Will Krasne (26:21) Absolutely, and frankly I think we're the only publication to talk with him that doesn't ask him about surfing. And that's not what we're about here. We're about the real estate. Hiten Samtani (26:29) You know I'm trying to learn how to surf, it's not going very well. Thanks again to our sponsor AirGarage. You can see how their full service parking management solution benefits you by going to airgarage.com/promote. That's airgarage.com/promote. Will Krasne (26:52) You can even leave your review under the name of an opera singer if you need to. Hiten Samtani (26:56) We'll be back next week. Thanks so much. Ciao.