Paul Feinstein is the CEO and founder of Audent Global Asset Management, an advisory and investment management firm whose clients include family offices. He discusses the firm’s family office work and the trends they are seeing:
How do you engage with family offices?
We try to get as much information about the family as we can, to approach this holistically, thinking about what their objectives are.
Usually, there are other investment houses involved as well. Family offices are usually thoughtful about finding people who do a really good job in a particular space. So, if we can work together, I think the family offices are better served. Family offices are very open to allowing us to help with some of these discussions. We see the world with a different set of eyes, and usually that’s appreciated.
Family offices don’t want things that are just off the shelf. They want to be a little bit more opportunistic about their investments. We’re very good at sourcing— at seeing where the money is going to be in the next three to five years.
We have expertise in the capital markets, and we’ve also built a tremendous pipeline and capability in real estate. Multifamily and student housing are two cornerstones to our business. We also do a tremendous amount of debt lending to developers, typically for later-stage multifamily developments where the dirt has already been acquired and we’ll help bridge the gap to get it ready for construction.
What trends are you seeing? Where are family offices looking to invest now?
I believe we’re entering into a pretty good market cycle in the multifamily housing space. The banks are starting to loosen up and look for opportunities now. The tide is turning right now for the banks, which creates a great backstop for family offices and real estate investing in general.
More broadly, I think everybody is just kind of reevaluating their portfolios. This is a common theme for family offices on a yearly basis— they look at all their holdings. They usually take a longer view, and I think the markets are going to open up for them in a lot of different areas. So, it will be interesting to see how they reposition things.
What are your expectations for this year?
This year is going to be interesting given the election and the political backdrop that we’re operating in.
We’re coming off a really strong year last year, so we’ve been taking a cautious approach to markets generally. We’re sitting on more cash than we normally would— we’re looking for opportunities. On the real estate side, I really think there are a lot of opportunities.
