Capital from principals who have been sponsors — guarantees signed, our own names on the line, having sat exactly where you sit. We finance the whole structure, from the senior loan to the equity gap behind it, and underwrite every deal from the owner's side.
See the box ↓Most capital in commercial real estate has never stood where the sponsor stands. We have. Underpin finances well-sponsored real estate at a financing moment — a maturity, a recapitalization, an equity gap a refinance no longer covers — from the senior loan up. And our interest sits inside the structure, not on top of it: when the sponsor wins, we win.
Built for when the ground shifts — billions sponsored as principals across acquisition and development, with the guarantees signed to prove it.
Underpinning is the quiet discipline of strengthening the foundation beneath a building that deserves to stand — reinforcement, not demolition. That is most of what crosses our desk: good real estate whose capital structure no longer fits the moment. The work we chose, and the name we chose for it.
It is meticulous work, done mostly out of sight. We hold our underwriting to that standard — and our partnerships to one just as simple: agree on the plan, then carry it out together.
Full stack, by design. We recapitalize good real estate with bad timing — a plan takes years to execute, and the market it delivers into is rarely the one it was underwritten in. We restructure the capital so the asset can meet today's market: the senior loan, the equity gap behind it, and fresh sponsor cash, closed as one structure with one counterparty.
Senior secured first‑mortgage loans of $5M to $20M on standing, income‑producing property at a financing moment — a maturity, a plan a bank can't underwrite yet, a lender out of room. Underwritten to the downside, priced to value we can defend, with two exits identified before a dollar moves.
When today's values leave a refinance short, we fill the space between — preferred equity and selective co‑investment, behind our senior loan or someone else's, always alongside fresh sponsor cash.
We take a gap position only where the plan closes it: rent we can already see, and a basis well below replacement cost.
Our capital sits inside the structure, so it only does well when the plan does — and we work the plan with you. Owner‑to‑owner help on the revenue side: accelerated lease‑up, sharper pricing, stronger sales performance, with dedicated asset management growing as the book does.
Most capital watches the plan. Ours is in it.
Most of our lending begins with an intermediary. We built Underpin to be the lender you want in your deal — a clear box, a fast and honest answer, and terms that hold at the closing table.
Download the box (PDF) — the same criteria, for your files and your clients.
We are a senior secured lender against standing, income‑producing real estate. We do not finance ground‑up construction, land, single‑family residential, senior living, or mobile home parks, and we are not currently active in office or hospitality.
Ground‑up development is a deliberate, sequenced expansion for us rather than a capability gap — construction is gated behind a dedicated draw‑administration and construction underwriting function we intend to build properly rather than improvise.
We lend to experienced sponsors with completed, comparable projects. We do not lend to first‑time sponsors.
Send us a deal and you’ll have an honest answer — it fits and here’s what we need next, it doesn’t and here’s precisely why, or here’s the one thing we can’t decide without. Not a maybe, and not silence. Nobody spends money on title, survey or third‑party reports until the structure and sponsor questions are settled — not our money and not your client’s.
Your fee is respected and papered, and if we transact with your client, you are in the deal. We don’t go around the people who bring us business — load-bearing, not dead weight applies to intermediaries too. The brokers who work with us make money with us again.
If you're the bank: bring us the loan you can't extend. We cure it rather than take it — a recapitalization behind a smaller senior you keep, or a full refinance with you first in line for the permanent financing when the plan lands. Your client stays your client, and the deposits stay where they are.
Good engineering teaches the lessons good investing requires: respect the loads you cannot control, design for the stress you hope never arrives, and build in margin before you build up. Underpinning itself teaches the sharpest one — in construction, it is so often the price of plans that didn't line up. So alignment comes first here: we settle the plan with our sponsor before capital is placed, and nobody retrofits the partnership later.
We underwrite conservatively and would rather miss a deal than misjudge one. We treat investor capital as held in trust, not deployed for its own sake.
The terms are table stakes — anyone can quote a rate. What we bring is harder to find: a partner who has carried the weight you carry, steadiest when the ground shifts.
This is unglamorous work, and we prefer it that way. Underpinning is never the part anyone admires. It is simply the part that holds everything up.
More than two decades in private equity and real estate. He began in M&A at Platinum Equity, then completed more than $2.7 billion of real estate acquisition and development as an executive and principal — at Weintraub Real Estate Group in Los Angeles, RAD Ventures in Venice, California, and Accomplice Group. After 2009 he founded a data-enabled non-QM lending platform — backed by QED Investors and Spark Capital — that became one of the largest non-QM lenders in the country. Having built and owned, he underwrites from the borrower's side, not only the lender's. He runs Underpin from Boise, Idaho.