Iker Garcia, 29
Assistant vice president at CIM Group
Iker Garcia understands loans inside and out.
The Mexico City-born commercial real estate professional spent the first six years of his career at PGIM Real Estate, one of the global leaders in real estate investment management, where he started on the credit side. Garcia began as an analyst and worked his way up to senior associate, where his job functions evolved over the years along with his client base.
“As I progressed from analyst to senior analyst, my day-to-day job was to evaluate, underwrite, and execute commercial real estate loans across all asset classes in the U.S.,” he said. “I’ve done loans everywhere.”
Three years into his career at PGIM, Garcia jumped at the chance to move to London and grow the firm’s European CRE credit platform. After persuading his girlfriend to make the move with him (she said yes, with the stipulation that they marry before departing), Garcia began filling mezzanine, preferred-equity and senior loan positions.
“It was a great experience overall,” he said. “The cool thing about doing loans in Europe is that you’re looking at loans all over the continent, and every country is so different, every culture is different, the language is so different. I was so used to the U.S. market, where everything is the same. It just made me have to become more creative and nimble.”
Upon returning stateside in 2021, Garcia joined CIM, where his job is to help a 25-person investment team manage a credit platform of about $10 billion in assets under management. They originate CRE loans and other types of credit products across the U.S. and Europe.
“My job is to evaluate deals, execute deals, and manage deals, and that’s my impact on the CRE industry,” he said. “I’m pretty young, but I’ve had the good luck to be able to work at two groups that do a lot of loans.”
