Jordan Slone and Richard Litton

Harbor Group International (HGI), as it often has over its 40-year history, found ways to thrive during this past year’s market volatility.

The Norfolk, Va.-based company led by Jordan Slone and Richard Litton focused heavily on recapitalization investments in 2024, teaming with multifamily property owners saddled with floating-rate debt in an elevated interest rate climate and in need of fresh capital. HGI’s versatile development and credit platform has enabled it to deploy to various points of the capital stack for recapitalizations, including by providing preferred equity, mezzanine and common equity.

“A hallmark of Harbor Group through our history is to really utilize our strengths and understand the property level fundamentals but then capitalize on different areas of market dislocation,” Litton said. “We really ramped up and deployed significantly more equity for partnering with developers in ground-up projects with terms and with structures better than would have been available a few years ago simply because of a capital scarcity.”

HGI’s active 2024 continued into 2025 when it formed a joint venture in January with Garrett Companies and Telis Group to complete a $630.5 million recapitalization of a 2,192-unit multifamily portfolio. The recap involves apartment projects in various stages of development across Colorado, Minnesota, Indiana and Arizona. 

Capitalizing on market opportunities also translated to the office market, where HGI teamed with AmTrust Realty as an equity partner for a $65.5 million acquisition of Manhattan’s 360 Lexington Avenue in late 2024. The deal reflected a shift HGI saw over the last year. Some tailwinds in the Manhattan office sector offered a chance to seize on discounted transactions for certain assets financed in the commercial mortgage-backed securities single-asset, single-borrower (SASB) market.

“In early 2024, you were really seeing some positive leasing momentum in Manhattan and the trophy buildings, and many of those were financed in the SASB space with loans securitized and sold off in different bond tranches,” Litton said. “We thought there was a real dislocation there, and we raised capital for a small fund and purchased bonds and have since liquidated, with our thesis proving right on that strategy.”