REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY, MORTGAGE AND LENDING
Businesswire | May 08, 2023
Axar Capital Management LP (“Axar”) and Morning Calm Management, LLC (“Morning Calm”) today announced the launch of Morning Axe Management (“MAM” or the “Company”), a real estate lending platform formed to offer capital solutions by originating senior loans and mezzanine loans in commercial real estate nationwide. The Company will invest and manage discretionary capital on behalf of life companies and other institutional investors. Morning Axe will setup dedicated headquarter operations in Des Moines, IA with future origination teams spread across the country.
Morning Calm is a vertically integrated real estate investment and management platform with a focus on special situation investing. Axar is a value-oriented investment firm focused on highly flexible, opportunistic investing in the corporate middle market. Since their respective inceptions, Morning Calm and Axar have deployed over $5.0 billion of capital, including real estate investments in target property sectors.
The MAM platform launches with access to approximately $250 million of capital via a separately managed account. MAM has also engaged Raymond James to support additional institutional fund raising. MAM’s strategy is to bring new solutions to commercial property borrowers as traditional lenders work through legacy issues and otherwise seek to deleverage in a rapidly changing market environment. MAM’s new credit and structured finance platform aims to fill that gap. Target property sectors include industrial, multifamily, retail, self storage and office, among others.
“The convergence of rising rates and the decreased availability of real estate credit has created an opportunity for MAM to be a solution to borrowers looking to acquire properties or refinance existing loans. As liquidity remains scarce in the real estate capital markets, we will be well-positioned to be a preferred partner to leading sponsors,” said T.J. Heither, Head of National Originations. “The combination of Morning Calm and Axar Capital bring complementary skill sets, a long history of successful partnerships and significant infrastructure that will allow MAM to efficiently scale and diversify our portfolio of investments.” Prior to joining MAM, Mr. Heither was most recently the Senior Vice President, National Commercial Real Estate, at Susser Bank. Prior to that he held origination and investing roles at Mutual of Omaha Bank and Principal Global Investors.
“This new platform will help borrowers access capital in a challenged market that has seen some of the largest lenders reducing their appetite for risk,” said Mukang Cho, Founder and CEO of Morning Calm. “The real estate credit market has diversified and grown significantly in recent years, and its recent dislocation creates a large void for MAM to fill.”
About Axar Capital Management LP
Axar Capital Management LP is a value-oriented investment firm focused on highly flexible, opportunistic investing in the corporate middle market. Axar's investment team focuses on opportunities across the capital structure in complex situations as a provider of debt and equity solutions that allow its management teams and portfolio companies to realize their long-term value potential.
About Morning Calm Management
Morning Calm Management is a vertically integrated real estate management firm with a focus on special situation investing. Through its affiliates, the firm owns and manages approximately 10 million square feet of commercial real estate throughout the United States on behalf of private and institutional capital.
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BROKERAGE, REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT
Businesswire | April 20, 2023
Lessen, the premier tech-enabled, end-to-end solution for outsourced real estate property services, announced today a strategic acquisition of Blue Skyre IBE, a global facilities management solutions provider. This acquisition allows Lessen to extend its offerings in facilities management and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) solutions, as it continues to pursue its vision of bringing unparalleled operational excellence and efficiency, enhanced services and advanced technology to commercial and residential real estate—all under the direction of a single, unified platform.
Blue Skyre IBE Chief Executive Officer Maureen Ehrenberg and Chief Strategy & Product Officer Colette Temmink will join the Lessen leadership team. Ehrenberg is now president of Lessen’s commercial division, which was formerly the commercial division of SMS Assist, acquired by Lessen in January 2023.
Formerly CEO of Blue Skyre IBE, as well as a co-founder, Ehrenberg is an internationally recognized real estate industry business leader, with more than 35 years of experience in business process transformation, strategic positioning and operations of large, complex portfolios. Before co-founding BSI, she was the Global Head of Strategic Real Estate Operations for WeWork. Her previous experience also includes being International Director and Global President of JLL Integrated Facilities Management Services; Global Head of Integrated Facility Management at CBRE, and Executive Vice President of Grubb & Ellis Company and President and CEO of Grubb and Ellis Management Services, Inc. Ehrenberg was named to the Woman of Influence Hall of Fame by Real Estate Forum/Globe St.
Temmink is Chief Operating Officer of the commercial division.
"This acquisition advances our goal of providing a game-changing, tech-enabled service model for the entire real estate ecosystem,” said Jay McKee, CEO of Lessen. “Lessen and Blue Skyre share a vision of leveraging technology to help shape the future of real estate for a better world, solving pain points, and replacing complexity with transparency and operational efficiency backed by data-driven insights. With this most recent acquisition, Lessen is uniquely positioned to transform commercial and residential real estate to the benefit of all the stakeholders.”
Added McKee, “I’m thrilled to welcome Maureen and Colette to the Lessen family. Their experience, industry track record and expertise will be invaluable as we continue to broaden our reach into commercial facilities management.”
As president of Lessen's SMS Assist Commercial Division, Ehrenberg will drive business strategy and manage overall resources, partnerships, and operations to provide the most advanced and innovative integrated facilities management operating platform for commercial properties. Ehrenberg is focused on growing the enterprise client space, creating additional value, operational advances and savings for existing customers and bringing frictionless, fluid and ESG-focused operating solutions to the market, challenging the status quo.
“Leading Lessen’s commercial business division is an incredible opportunity to drive breakthrough innovation in facilities management,” said Ehrenberg. “The market is calling for a new business model for facilities management solutions; clients seek comprehensive data integration, real-time performance management, portfolio resiliency, service excellence and operationalizing ESG—all of which Lessen delivers through its advanced, integrated digital operating platform.”
As Chief Operating Officer, Commercial Division, Temmink is responsible for leading service delivery and operational excellence in the day-to-day support of clients.
Most recently Chief Strategy & Product Officer at Blue Skyre IBE, Temmink has also served as Senior Vice President and Chief Administration Officer at Apollo Education Group and held global real estate executive roles at Cushman & Wakefield, Oracle and Boeing. She is a renowned speaker and thought leader on corporate real estate, facilities management, ESG and PropTech. Temmink is the co-chair of the International Facilities Management (IFMA) ITC, a top-rated faculty for the MCR Capstone CoreNet course and serves as an editorial board member for the Corporate Real Estate Journal.
“Facilities management has been going through a transformation and Lessen has been at the forefront of this change,” said Temmink. “Delivering value, quality, predictive and efficient services to clients while providing real-time business insights is critical. Lessen’s dynamic approach to strategic integrated facilities management is exactly what the industry requires today.”
About Lessen
Lessen, together with SMS Assist, is the world class, tech-enabled, end-to-end property service provider transforming how commercial and residential real estate services are delivered and managed at scale. Our technology platform provides data-driven insights that unlock key growth opportunities for the entire real estate ecosystem—including investors, owners, managers, and service providers. Lessen enables local field managers to deploy and oversee a network of vetted, qualified vendors acting as one unit across distributed property portfolios—serving a national footprint of more than 1 million properties and completing more than 2.5 million work orders annually across an expanding range of services. Lessen, Inc. is a venture-backed, privately held company with offices in Scottsdale and Chicago. To learn more, visit Lessen.com and smsassist.com.
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REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY, INVESTMENTS
PRweb | April 19, 2023
REMLogics, LLC (REMLogics), a leader in modern, cloud-native real estate property management solutions, announced today that their commercial and residential suite of applications are now completely integrated to Intuit’s (NASDAQ: INTU) QuickBooks financial and accounting platform.
“We’re very excited to partner with small real estate property owners and operators to help them better serve their tenants and residents”, shared Donnie Law, CEO and Chief Software Architect at REMLogics. “These organizations can now immediately take advantage of the same modern technology platform and applications that medium to large real estate companies use to manage and grow their businesses.”
REMLogics is best known for providing an eco-system of modern, cloud-native real estate management applications that are built on the industry’s only enterprise no-code development platform. REMLogics clients benefit from robust applications that manage CRM, deal flow, properties, leases, tenants and residents, and billing.
“Our clients are confident their business is running on a modern technology platform that provides them with future-proof software investment protection. We architected our platform and applications to ensure that our clients could scale and grow their business years into the future and always be able to adopt new technologies as they come along.” Law said.
REMLogics is an open platform that can be integrated to other open systems through industry standard REST-based API endpoints. This enables their clients to take advantage of other proptech innovations, such as property marketing, smart building, smart device, utility monitoring, and property maintenance systems. The platform is also built with mobility in mind. All REMLogics applications can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere, at any time, and from any device.
About REMLogics
REMLogics is redefining real estate management for commercial and residential owners and operators. Clients benefit from a modern, cloud-native solution built on the industry’s only enterprise no-code development platform. REMLogics is designed for mobility and integration so clients can respond faster to the ever-changing technology and real estate landscape. Learn how you can drive innovation, embrace new technologies, outpace the competition, and future-proof your real estate management investment by visiting http://www.remlogics.net.
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