Ran Eliasaf

Who they are

Ran Eliasaf founded Northwind Group, and in The Promote's coverage he is the lender who keeps showing up in New York's hairiest capital stacks. He used to be on the equity side and runs a debt fund now; asked whether he misses owning, he said he doesn't. Hiten has called him unusually candid for a lender. He was the first guest ever on The Promote Podcast, in Episode 9 (May 2025), where he explained how big loans come together. As Hiten recounted later, Eliasaf freely admits Northwind isn't the cheapest money in town. Its pitch is that it moves fast and it closes.

His signature trade is 125 Greenwich, the long-stalled Lower Manhattan supertall. In 2023 he lent Fortress, Davide Bizzi and Serdar Bilgili $313M to revive the project, then financed his own position with a $220M note-on-note from Madison Realty Capital. Starwood later took Northwind out. He was comfortable where others weren't, writing a $120M inventory loan on Michael Shvo's slow-selling Mandarin Oriental condos. He is also a repeat lender to David Werner's flip-and-convert machine, including the former Pfizer HQ conversion with Nathan Berman.

These days Eliasaf is leaning hardest into skilled nursing. In an Insiders-only In Conversation interview published in July 2026, he said roughly 70% of his latest fund was going to SNFs. His rules: lend only on portfolios, back large regional operators, stick to certificate-of-need states with steady Medicaid policy (Ohio, yes; Massachusetts, never). He also covered land loans and a new warehouse line. In New York he is still the closer of last resort. After Bank OZK walked away from Jonathan Landau's Brooklyn Heights tower, Northwind stepped in with roughly $110M in land and predevelopment debt. In October 2026, Northwind was reported to have raised a $1B debt fund, upsized from $500M.