David Magnuson, 31
Senior vice president at Eastdil Secured
To hear it from David Magnuson, thus far his career sounds like a commercial real estate capital markets Swiss Army knife.
After graduating from the University of Southern California in 2013, he began as an analyst at Eastdil Secured, one of the nation’s premier CRE investment firms, and thereupon touched everything from debt and equity financing to hotel, office and industrial developments.
“The way Eastdil is set up, it’s a generalist start, so you touch everything and see what you like,” explained Magnuson. “For the past seven years, I’ve been working on financings and debt placement, but, obviously, working hand in hand with our equity team on a number of different transactions.”
Working out of the firm’s 50-person Los Angeles office, Magnuson weathered a difficult transaction year by closing several commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) and single-asset, single-borrower (SASB) securitizations, including a $990 million CMBS deal for TPG and Digital Realty on three data centers in Northern Virginia. Magnuson’s SoCal team also coordinated a $325 million preferred-equity raise for a $625 million origination that Worthe Real Estate and Stockbridge completed in May on their Warner Bros. Burbank Studio acquisition.
But a major shift for Magnuson has been how his team has handled an increased amount of loan sales that have come through — a sure sign of a market in transition, with banks and debt funds looking to offload underwater loans and hungry buyers looking to grab value at a significant discount.
“That business is starting to pick up,” he said. “There’s more distress, more lenders are coming to our team for valuation thoughts and to potentially sell loans. So we are seeing that part of the market become more active.”
Between debt, equity, CMBS and loan sales, there’s not much Magnuson hasn’t done in his short career at Eastdil. Looking ahead to 2024, he expects to work in the data center and infrastructure space. “I’m fortunate the Eastdil team gives us a ton of exposure to a ton of different product types,” he said.
