The 20 Rising Stars of Real Estate 2008 - (Page 23) quipped. “But I plan on still working and still putting deals together.” 17. 16 . BRENT SPRENKLE County for $70 million, which was $2 million above the asking price and his largest deal so far. Despite some hiccups, he predicted the market will be back to what he called ‘normal’ soon.“Right now, we’re going through an adjustment period,” he said. “The odds that, in 10 years from now, the market will be significantly stronger are extremely high.” In the current market, some sales are not being priced properly, Sprenkle noted, adding that Sperry Van Ness assesses that in its transactions. For example, the firm listed a property at $10.5 million,while a competitor listed it at $11 million.“Our view was that the property wasn’t being properly marketed, he said. “We made sure we ” were hitting every avenue we could. This ” included what Sprenkle described as an aggressive marketing campaign of advertising to brokers, explaining that the firm’s strategy is to market a property not only to buyers but to the entire brokerage community.“Our approach is that there is no single way to sell a property, he said,adding that ” the strategy resulted in Sperry Van Ness selling it via a broker for $10.8 million. Prior to joining Sperry Van Ness, Sprenkle served as a mechanical engineer for Hughes Space and Communications, where he specialized in the design of satellite payload communication systems. He noted that he is looking forward to spending his next decade in real estate. “I’d like to say I’ll be retired,” he MARCH 2008 built a company from the ground up that now has 600 employees across the U.S. and Europe. He said he got into real estate because it is “aggressive, measurable and creative,” he said, calling finance the most interesting part of the real estate market. He said that, in 10 years, he hopes to still be in the lending business. The company Szwajkowski most admires is Goldman Sachs. “Goldman is the pre-eminent investment bank, not only on Wall Street, but in the world,” he said, adding that it posted record profits last year when many investment banks were having a harder time. Before joining CapitalSource, Szwajkowski served as founder and president of Clarity Holdings, a financial services holding company, from April 1999 until October 2000. From 1992 to 1999, he held various senior positions at Credit Suisse First Boston and Heller Financial. He currently serves on the MICHAEL SZWAJKOWSKI President, Structured Finance Business CapitalSource, Chevy Chase, Md. Age: 41 Education: Bowdoin College (B.A. in English); University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (M.B.A.) Mentors: John Delaney, Chief Executive Officer, CapitalSource; Laura Lee Martin, Chief Financial Officer, Jones Lang LaSalle Since February 2005, Szwajkowski has served as president of CapitalSource’s structured finance business, which specializes in providing innovative debt facilities to companies active in the vacation ownership, real estate and finance industries. Prior to that, he was managing director and group head of the structured finance business for four years. “Our senior management team has significant expertise in vacation ownership finance, real estate finance and lender and rediscount finance,” Szwajkowski said. “On a combined basis, the members of our team have structured in excess of $10 billion in related debt and equity-oriented transactions.” Szwajkowski believes a period of re-pricing has begun in the real estate markets that will last the next two or three years. “Today we sit at a pretty interesting vantage point,” he said.“It’s going to take a fair amount of time for capital to come back into the market.” He noted that a consensus on how to price risk is missing in the markets right now, but that consensus will come and the markets will be more organized. “We’ll see ownership of institutional real estate organized in the hands of funds and institutional investors,” he added. Szwajkowski is most proud of having 17 . MICHAEL SZWAJKOWSKI REAL ESTATE RISING STARS 23
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