Steven Bernstein, 32
Managing director in credit investments at Harbor Group International
Steven Bernstein developed a fascination with the particulars of investing at an early age.
“I was always intrigued by ways to take money, whether from institutions or individuals, and turn that into profit through prudent investment,” said Bernstein. “Watching how money grows, how you can take the money people earn and turn that into real wealth, has always fascinated me.”
Bernstein, a graduate of the University of Maryland’s business school, has put that fascination to good use during his seven years at Harbor Group International (HGI), where he has completed more than $7 billion in multifamily credit investments, and led due diligence and purchase for more than 50 Freddie Mac B piece investments.
Bernstein’s accomplishments at the firm also include leading the issuance of HGI’s first Freddie Mac Q securitization in December 2022, during an especially challenging time for marketing commercial real estate CLO issuance.
“One of the things I oversee on the credit side is capital markets, inclusive of things like warehouse financing and bond issuance,” said Bernstein. “In this case, I worked through the process with Freddie Mac to get loans approved and put into the securitization, as well as subsequently working with various banks and other securitization parties to arrange the issuance.”
Bernstein also helped launch the firm’s senior lending bridge platform in 2020. That platform did $2.6 billion of lending from its founding to year-end 2022. Bernstein financed the loans by issuing four securitizations totaling more than $1.8 billion.
“One part of the capital stack where we hadn’t been active was in directly originating senior loans,” said Bernstein. “So, in the early days of the pandemic, we launched a senior lending program specifically geared towards multifamily. We ramped up pretty quickly and made our first loan in August of 2020, and then we were a very active lender. As that went through at the end of 2022, we also issued our first CRE CLO from those loans as part of that lending program, and two additional CRE CLOs and a Freddie Mac Q deal.
“We situated ourselves as an important player within the CRE CLO industry, and were well received as an added participant in that market.”
