AJ Felberbaum.
AJ Felberbaum, 25
Director at BayBridge Real Estate Capital
“A to Z” is how AJ Felberbaum describes what he does at BayBridge Real Estate Capital, the Miami-based advisory group formed by former Cooper-Horowitz commercial real estate finance whizzes Jay and Spencer Miller.
Felberbaum joined the brothers Miller in departing New York-based Cooper-Horowitz to start a capital markets advisory division within BayBridge Capital at the beginning of 2020, just prior to the pandemic.
After a whirlwind first year at BayBridge, their group is fully off to the races in 2021.
“Last year was just crazy, to say the least, especially for our business,” Felberbaum said. “We made it out, and we all became better because of it too.”
Felberbaum handles originations and executions, working daily to nab new structured finance assignments, and trailblazing nationwide to meet and engage clients, as well as signing up and closing deals.
He studied international affairs and economics at George Washington University in D.C. Despite initially not knowing which direction to take, he went the way of commercial real estate. The sector was one he had some experience with, as his father was a commercial real estate attorney in Florida — Felberbaum is from Boca Raton, where BayBridge has an outpost.
His family history was one reason he decided to join the Millers at BayBridge.
“Everyone in my family is entrepreneurial and has their own business,” Felberbaum said, adding that a three-month stint at global brokerage powerhouse Cushman & Wakefield in the summer of 2017 piqued his interest in advisory work.
“It was exciting and highly entrepreneurial,” he said.
Because BayBridge is a division within a larger financial services company, the firm has “true institutional backing and a presence in the market. So we can still be dynamic and entrepreneurial ourselves, so it’s a unique hybrid.”
BayBridge has closed $500 million in debt in the first nine months of this year. In July, the firm closed on a $350 million CMBS financing from Credit Suisse on an eight-building suburban office portfolio. The month before, it locked in about $21 million in acquisition financing from Ardent Financial on a 1,538-acre master-planned development in Reno, Nev. —M.B.
