Commercial Real Estate in 2024 Was All About a Tough Turnaround
From bank failures to soaring borrowing costs, Commercial Observer examined how CRE weathered 2024's perfect storm of market volatility, political uncertainty, and dramatic shifts across asset classes. Non-bank lenders, including Josh Zegen’s Madison Realty Capital, found themselves busy as construction lenders, bridge lenders, note purchasers, and as lender servicers or financers, providing banks, private credit funds and mortgage REITs with needed capital. Zegen told Commercial Observer that his firm, which carries $21 billion in assets, financed a $400 million deal to build a 50-unit condo on Fisher Island in Miami Beach; a $133 million mortgage to finish construction of a 51-story, 379-key Marriott hotel in New York City; and secured $2.04 billion in equity commitments for its sixth U.S. real estate debt fund. “You’re starting to see the market finally start to break a bit on deals that might have been nonperforming [in the past],” said Zegen. “With this theme of higher-for-longer [interest rates], people feel they have to do something.”
