The real estate capital advisory firm was started by Max Friedman, who serves as the company’s chief executive.
Friedman had roughly a decade of experience in real estate capital advisory at companies such as George Smith Partners Inc. in Century City and the Los Angeles office of Boston Private Bank.
“I thought there was an opportunity to leverage my connections in the capital markets,” Friedman said.
He is focused on capitalizing construction and heavy renovation projects in the middle markets where the typical deals he works on range from a few million dollars to $25 million.
Friedman’s clients largely fall into one of two buckets: established development firms that need a capital adviser, or newer developer and renovation groups that are “earlier in their cycle of having started in the last few years where I could really advocate for those groups in the capital markets and in some cases help them graduate” to higher-end deals.
Recent transactions include $3.6 million for a 5,000-square-foot creative office property in Santa Monica, a $5 million luxury apartment construction loan in West Hollywood and a $3 million creative office bridge loan in Silverlake.
Friedman said many of his clients are based in Southern California, and a lot of his business is local, but he also works with clients in other areas.
In addition to a large geographic coverage area, Mandri also works across several asset types.
“We’ve closed across the major food groups. Where we’ve been busy and finding some traction lately has been in the creative office space, multifamily and apartments and specialty product types. Lately, that has meant creative office focused on the music and entertainment industry with some music studio and rehearsal space,” Friedman said.
The media and entertainment industry, he added, “felt the least headwind from the impacts of Covid.”
“It’s felt like the demand for that profile of product has maintained or even increased though the Covid headwinds,” he said.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Friedman said the real estate lending market has begun to return to normal.
“The onset, there were some pretty significant headwinds as folks were trying to get a sense of timing and return to normalcy,” he said. “Since earlier this year, it feels like it has returned in large part to business as usual in terms of access to capital and rates for our borrower clients.”
Friedman added that he is now often able to find multiple financing options for property owners he is working with.
He expects to continue to see an active market.
“It feels like it’s thankfully going to be more of the same of what we’ve seen since earlier this year,” Friedman said. “Our clients are focused on ground-up development and heavy value-add renovations. They are actively looking for new acquisition targets here in Southern California and gateway cities across the U.S. and key secondary markets. It feels like the volume will maintain,” Friedman said.
