Northwind Group

Who it is

Northwind Group is an alternative lender that writes the paper banks won't. That means land and predevelopment loans, rescue capital for stalled projects, condo inventory loans, and acquisition debt for office-to-resi plays. The Promote calls it one of the most prolific debt funds around, and when the newsletter writes about a messy New York deal, Northwind is often somewhere in it. Its book has two halves. One is New York multifamily and development. The other is a national skilled-nursing practice that grew out of healthcare investing it began in 2016. Northwind also borrows against its own loans: Madison Realty Capital has supplied it warehouse lines and loan-on-loan financing.

Its calling card is the 2023 recap of 125 Greenwich. Northwind lent $313M to revive the stalled supertall and backed that position with a $220M note-on-note from Madison, until Starwood refinanced it out. The firm has since become a house lender to David Werner's playbook. It wrote a $95M acquisition loan for Werner and Lloyd Goldman's BLDG at 100 Wall in 2024. It financed the assembly of the former Pfizer HQ, including a reported $135M loan for the Werner/Metro Loft conversion. It made a $45M acquisition and predev loan to the Smeke family's CSC for 300 E 42nd St. And it financed Werner/601W's cut-rate Chicago tower purchase in February 2026.

The pipeline keeps filling. Bank OZK pulled out of Jonathan Landau's planned Brooklyn Heights tower at 205 Montague, and in December 2025 Northwind closed a roughly $110M land and predevelopment loan there. In September 2026 it stepped up with a $200M loan on BH3 and Capstone's Downtown Brooklyn office-to-resi conversion. A month later it was reported to have raised a $1B debt fund, upsized from $500M. Eliasaf has said about 70% of the latest fund is earmarked for SNFs, lent only against portfolios of large regional operators in certificate-of-need states.