Neha Santiago from Cerberus, 875 Third Ave, 10th Floor, New York, New York, March 3, 2022. Yvonne Albinowski/For Commercial Observer
Neha Santiago
Head of Real Estate Private Credit at Cerberus Capital Management
Neha Santiago joined Cerberus Capital Management in May 2020 while the world was buckling under the duress of the coronavirus pandemic. After almost a decade at Goldman Sachs, she was then tasked with building Cerberus’ brand-new real estate private credit business from scratch.
But, with market disruption comes opportunity, and Santiago and her team quickly got to work.
“We were sitting on a significant amount of dry powder while a lot of our competitors were sidelined working out their existing books,” Santiago said. “We were able to see the opportunity set through a clear lens, and take advantage of what was in front of us.”
Since then, the platform has racked up $1.5 billion of whole loan originations, including a senior acquisition and redevelopment loan for the conversion of a flex office campus in Washington, D.C., to life sciences use, and a $72.8 million senior construction loan for Related Group’s Wynwood 29 residential and retail development in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood.
Cerberus’ debt platform has gravitated toward sectors that demonstrate resilience amid market volatility. As such, its loan portfolio is heavily (and happily) weighted to industrial and multifamily today, and it’s recently made strides into life sciences lending. The firm picks its spots carefully, viewing opportunities through a long-term lens with a focus on sustained trends.
Leveraging Cerberus’ impressive, broader real estate platform, the debt platform in particular provides value to its borrowers in being flexible and creative in its approach to structuring deals — rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all mindset.
“I think competition has always been a pretty constant and consistent characteristic of our industry, but I think our secret sauce — if you will — is definitely the flexibility of our capital,” Santiago said. “There’s a lot we’re able to do, in terms of where we play in the capital stack, and where we think we can generate the best risk-adjusted returns.”
Diversity was part of the early DNA for Cerberus’ real estate debt business and has been a top focus for Santiago. Today, one-third of the real estate credit team is women and it’s 35 percent racially diverse. More broadly, Cerberus is dedicated to bridging opportunity gaps for underrepresented groups and fostering an inclusive environment. —C.C.
