Mark Talgo
Senior Managing Director at New York Life Real Estate Investors
Last year's rank: 32
When the economy turns volatile, there is comfort in knowing that a firm has an undeniable track record for stability — including having been in business since before the Civil War.
“New York Life’s been around for 177 years, and the real estate group has been running for around a hundred,” said Mark Talgo. “We’ve been through a lot of different cycles. So, in good markets and bad, we’re always investing.”
For 2022, New York Life originated $6.3 billion of both fixed- and floating-rate loans consisting primarily of industrial and multifamily properties.
Much of this occurred in the first half of the year, before rising rates and increased volatility dampened transaction activity. To correct for the drop in business, New York Life expanded origination targets to sectors beyond their usual objectives.
“Historically, we’ve been very focused on the four [main] property types, which is typical of a lot of insurers,” said Talgo. “But the challenges in the office sector and retail, particularly the regional mall sector, really limited the amount of investment or lending opportunities in the traditional product types. So, we’ve been positioning ourselves in other areas: self-storage, hotel lending, medical office and life sciences. This activity hasn’t been very significant individually, but, collectively, it becomes meaningful over time.”
New York Life’s significant 2022 transactions included serving as lead lender for a $290 million fixed-rate club loan secured by a retail center in northern New Jersey sponsored by a public REIT; and six portfolio loans, one of which included a fixed and floating structure, totaling $1.1 billion and secured by Class A industrial properties in major U.S. logistics markets.
“We’re a big advocate of portfolio-
level financing, particularly when we look at industrial, because industrial tends to be smaller assets,” said Talgo. “So, in order to get scale, you have to look at it on a portfolio basis. And having cross-defaulted, cross-collateralized pools that are not just in one state, but in multiple states, really helps diversify the risk. From a risk standpoint, it mitigates it significantly and allows us to put a lot more dollars out, which is much more productive and efficient for us.” —L.G.
