Private Placement Agent Information
Would someone be able to provide information on placement agents and their relative status/pay/exit opportunities? I'm not specifically asking for a ranking, but if you believe you have enough knowledge to provide a comprehensive ranking or tier list, go for it. There doesn't seem to be a ton of easily accessible info on them, so any insight would be incredibly appreciated.
A lot of IS or DSF guys who are good can work both sides. From my experience, aside from a small amount of boutiques (usually hotel focused idk why), no one niches super heavily on PP from brokerage side. The guys who do a decent amount of it - like I-sales guy doing 50% sales and 50% placement - are viewed as GOAT. It's another level of UW acumen. You run into more on the DSF side, especially a team, who will have certain people doing debt, certain people on JV equity - blah blah. It's much harder than placing debt (no argument here), so those that are good are viewed as badass. I do about 25%, mostly for development deals in the industrial space.
All the major firms do it, usually wrapped into Capital Markets teams. The robust teams will have someone focused on it, or at least someone who gets kicked those assignments. W&D has a good team in Bethesda, the HFF Securities crew, CBRE Capital (James Scott a goat).. All the big boys do it though. I know Spies does a good amount of it, National Partners do a good bit of it too. UBS has a good team, Eastdil obviously. Hodges Weill, Lazard, Park Hill. Evercore. Mission has certain hitters.
Some developers like TCC and Hines do it from their Capital Markets verticals.
Pay is comparable to IS or DSF. For the most part, MOST PART, principals will source equity themselves if the deal is easy to do - they want to work with relationship equity it saves so many headaches and they ain't paying you for bringing them their last partner. Bringing in a placement agent typically comes after they've run their traps and realized none of the obvious groups want the deal (at least at their nut).
I don't know why, but this response just hit differently.
The juxtaposition of slang and niche, succinct but not short, and a satisfying knowledge / word ratio. +SB
I stopped with the formalities the first time i hit add comment and the shit didn't post lol. Appreciate it though!
Hi - this is super helpful! Looking to learn more here - mind if I send you a private message?
Yeah just to second this – the “brokerages” will have a guy here or there that will pick off property-level or single asset JV equity from time to time.
The placement agents like Park Hill and Hodes Weill will spend most of their focus on discretionary equity for investment managers or funds. They are not “real estate” savvy per se at the asset level. And while they may do some “corporate advisory” from time to time they aren’t what you’d think of as pure play real estate investment bankers either.
The exceptionally valuable groups are smart around the entire spectrum of equity transactions – which I’ve listed in order of easiest to hardest to underwrite and place: (i) single asset or single deal (ii) programmatic or semi discretionary separate account or (iii) fully discretionary fund.
This capitalizations could be either new issues or recapitalization and secondary sales of existing LP interests (sometimes GP) in any of the vehicles or structures listed above.
IMO, this would be CBRE Capital Advisors, HFF Securities, and Eastdil Secured. HFFS was the GOAT in this space as far as I’ve studied the market.
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