Jeff DiModica, Lorcain Egan and Dennis Schuh

Starwood Property Trust was a perfect “10” last year, completing $10 billion of transactions across 60 loans. Roughly half of those loans were backed by industrial properties and 44 percent by multifamily or residential assets. 

As if that weren’t reason enough to “Give ’em a 10,” the REIT’s notable transactions included a $500 million data center construction loan in Utah that’s pre-leased to a hyperscale tenant, and a $500 million refinance of a 42-asset industrial portfolio in New York. 

Tackling large, complex transactions is one of Starwood’s calling cards, and its average loan balance exceeded $150 million this past year across ground-up developments, heavy transitional deals, lease-up scenarios and straightforward cash-flowing bridge loans. 

During a year where some lenders were sidelined at times, Starwood stayed the course. “We’ve invested every quarter since COVID,” Jeff DiModica said. “We have this consistent capital, and that’s really helped us stay in front of borrowers, because they look at us as being a consistent source of capital for them. We’re able to write loans in every market.” 

“We’ve originated through various storms, always having access to capital,” Dennis Schuh said. “We always lean into larger deals, and we differentiate ourselves with that size. We did around 10 deals that were $300, $400, $500 million in size, which crowds out a lot of the competition.” 

At the corporate level, Starwood raised $4.4 billion of debt and equity last year, “which was a record for us,” DiModica said. “That really set us up well with tremendous liquidity coming into 2026 to be on our front foot and be opportunistic.” 

The firm also splashed some cash, paying $2.2 billion for Fundamental Income Properties, a net-lease business. “It gives us another sector on top of all the others we’re in, which we can use to hone our opinions even more broadly,” DiModica said. 

The fact that over two-thirds of Starwood’s borrowers are repeat borrowers is the ultimate validation of its business, Lorcain Egan said.

“It stands to reason. We’ve been creative, we’re reliable, we’re fast, and we do that no matter what’s happening in the market,” Egan explained. “That’s relevant for Starwood Property Trust, but also for our debt funds. We’ve built up a really strong second vertical within our credit business, we’ve got the best business in Starwood Property Trust in terms of the listed space, and then our institutional client base is supporting us to build out a really strong private debt fund business.” 

“We’re really seeing the power of the franchise today,” DiModica said. “We have a balance sheet that’s really hard to compete with, but I think it’s our consistency that really paid off in the last year or two.”