New York Lender Looks To Move In on Landlords

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The Banking & Finance column in the May 19 issue described the move of an investment fund to Turner Impact Capital as the result of “poaching.” However, a spokeswoman for Turner said the move of the fund was “consensual.” Also, Turner Impact was launched in January, not in May.

FirstKey Lending, a New York firm specializing in loans to owners of single-family rental homes, has opened an L.A. office with plans to build business in California and other Western states.

The firm opened its Century City office last month and hired Dennis Cisterna as managing director. Cisterna had been in the Century City office of real estate investment bank Johnson Capital.

FirstKey lends to landlords who either want to expand their holdings or refinance existing debt.

Cisterna said he’ll work with clients who own just a handful of properties as well as clients who own hundreds of houses. Those clients might need larger loans than a community bank might be able to make. FirstKey will also make loans before a landlord has found a new property to buy – essentially providing growth capital.

California is a huge rental housing market, and Cisterna said FirstKey needed someone on the ground here to break into the market. It’s difficult to find the kind of relatively small landlords FirstKey lends to without an office in the region.

“People who invest in apartment buildings have trade groups,” he said. “But in this single-family market, there are mom-and-pops who own 50 houses. You have to have an on-the-ground presence to find them.”

Charter Fund

Bobby Turner, former chief executive of Century City real estate investment firm Canyon Capital Realty Advisors, launched his own firm last week, and he’s already poached an investment fund from Canyon and hired a handful of former Canyon executives.

Santa Monica’s Turner Impact Capital announced it has taken over management of the former Canyon-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund, a roughly $200 million fund established in 2011 by Canyon and retired tennis star Andre Agassi.

Now called the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund, it will continue to build charter school campuses across the country. Campuses are then leased to schools, which have an option to buy.

Turner told the Business Journal he expects the Agassi fund to be the only one that will make the switch from Canyon to Turner Impact.

Building charter schools is just one of several types of so-called impact investing Turner plans to do at his new firm. He also plans to invest in the development of affordable housing and health care facilities. Turner Impact looks to attract investors who seek solid financial returns as well as social benefit.

Turner said his split with Canyon came about because he wanted to focus more exclusively on such investments.

“I decided to focus all of my energy on socially impactful investments,” he said. “It became clear that I could not do that at Canyon and that creating a new firm would be the best solution.”

Other principals at Turner Impact include Dan Millman and Bari Sherman, who both left Canyon shortly after Turner’s departure.

Magazine Merger

Santa Monica real estate investor Marc Luzzatto is stepping into the fashion publishing business, announcing this month that he’s acquired Nylon Magazine and Fashion Indie.com with plans to package the publications for better advertising sales.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Luzzatto said Nylon and men’s magazine Nylon Guys have young, taste-making readers who are attractive to advertisers. Most of the magazines’ readers are single and have a good amount of disposable income.

“Nylon has an extraordinarily attractive demographic,” he said. “The median age is 25. You can probably count on one hand the number of print titles that have a loyal reader base among that age group.”

By packaging print product Nylon with online-only FashionIndie, he said that he’ll be able to offer an attractive array of advertising options for fashion brands.

Luzzatto is chief executive of real estate investment fund Luzzatto Co. and chairman of private equity firm Diversis Capital, both in Santa Monica.

C-suite News

Steve Reiner has joined West L.A. brokerage and investment bank B. Riley & Co. as managing director and head of consumer investment banking. He was previously a senior vice president at Manhattan Beach shoemaker Skechers USA Inc. … Max Friedman has joined Century City real estate investment bank Dekel Capital as senior vice president. He was previously a vice president in the L.A. office of Boston Private Bank and Trust Co. … Jeff Barcy and Sean Lenz have joined West L.A. investment bank Salem Partners as managing director and vice president, respectively. Both were previously with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Staff reporter James Rufus Koren can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 225.