Patrick Hanlon, Jason Krane, Evan Linkner and Russell Schildkraut
Principals at Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group
Last year's rank: 35
The housing market, a maelstrom of rising prices and shrinking availability that’s bedeviled buyers and renters, proved to be one of many bright spots for Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group last year. Having tallied $5.75 billion in originations in 2021, with more than half exceeding $100 million each, the big deals overwhelmingly tended to involve the red-hot single-family rental (SFR) and build-to-rent markets.
“I don’t think we’ve seen an asset class grow as much as this has for us,” Ackman-Ziff President Simon Ziff said.
Ackman-Ziff did over $887 million in debt facilities for three large institutional SFR owners with nationwide portfolios, as well as a handful of other select housing deals, including a $120 million multifamily in California, a $101 million equity placement on New York’s Billionaires’ Row and a $132.5 million mixed-use residential refinancing in California. And that’s table setting in many ways for 2022; the firm is looking at the biggest deal pipeline for the second quarter it has ever had.
“It’s not a last year thing,” Ziff said, talking about what made 2021 so lucrative. “We maintain high integrity with our clients and capital sources,” he noted. “It’s a good time for capital advisers when the market is challenging, because you get more business due to the turmoil of the market. While we’re busy, every deal is extremely hard.”
In looking back, the firm also sees its pro-bono financing work on behalf of a partnership between the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, providing a $175 million non-recourse bridge loan, as a big deal deserving of bragging rights. In addition, the firm’s AZ Educate summer program, which promotes diverse careers in commercial real estate, took on 85 students, many of whom landed internships or full-time jobs at high-level firms such as Citibank, Amazon, Blackstone, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. —P.S.
