A group led by HFZ Capital Group Founder Ziel Feldman has invested in commercial real estate advisers Allegiant Real Estate Capital.
Allegiant, which was launched last September, was founded by former FirstKey Lending CEO Randy Reiff. FirstKey was the rental home financing arm of Cerberus Capital Management. Last May, Cerberus exited the landlord financing business, in the process firing 30 workers in FirstKey.
When Allegiant was launched last September, it had an advisory agreement with an unnamed financial services firm to deploy $500 million in capital for commercial real estate debt deals. “After the recession, many banks reduced their CRE lending exposure as they faced increased regulation and scrutiny, which in turn served as a launch-pad for non-bank lenders like Allegiant to step in and fill the gap. As evidence of this opportunity, Allegiant has gained tremendous momentum over the past six months and is currently on pace to originate more than $1 billion in loans in 2017,” Reiff said.
Aside from Feldman, other investors in the venture are Anthony Tufariello, the former co-CIO of Real Estate at Fortress Investment Group, and Nir Meir, the Managing Principal of HFZ.
“Having worked closely with Randy and his team as a borrower, we have great confidence in their capabilities and are excited to partner with them. In the normal course of our core business developing, owning and managing commercial and residential real estate, we regularly see compelling opportunities that our partnership with Allegiant will allow us to pursue,” Feldman said.
“ Allegiant offers a compelling value proposition and I welcome the opportunity to work closely with Randy and his team,” added Tufariello. “With the dislocation in the market, we are confident that additional opportunities exist and will be actively seeking to invest in other compelling and complimentary commercial real estate investment management platforms, development platforms and other related businesses creating a vertically integrated offering across the entire commercial real estate capital structure.”
Allegiant declined to disclose financial terms of the agreement. However, according to Reiff, the funds will “enable us to further expand our LP investor base, continue to grow our AUM and broaden our product offering for our customers.”
