About Us
Prior to founding SyndiGate, Jackson had a successful career in real estate acquisitions and development, working with several highly-regarded real estate development firms throughout the United States and Dubai.
Over his career he has been responsible for the acquisition and development of over 9M sf of real estate across multiple property types, including hospitality, casino, retail, multifamily and entertainment. The resulting value-in-place he brought to market totals over $9Bn, while the total value of all assets in which he has had an influential hand approaches $25Bn.
Much of Jackson’s experience has been devoted to pre-development activities, including underwriting, due diligence and debt and equity raises for real estate deals of the highest complexity.
Prior to his real estate career, Jackson worked in the Structured Finance department of JPMorgan Chase and attended Vassar College to earn a BA in International Studies. He also attended graduate school at NYU, where he earned a Masters in Real Estate Finance.
How It Began
It took a chance meeting through mutual friends for Simen and Jackson’s respective expertises to mesh and form a solution to a problem inherent in real estate private equity: the lack of a functioning secondary market for its positions.
“The experience of exiting my LP positions left me thinking....how could there be no secondary market for such a huge pool of assets?”
Jackson experienced this problem firsthand when he wanted to exit a portfolio of investments he had originated in Texas.
“I felt like the cycle had peaked and wanted to take my chips off the table. This is when I confronted the open secret of syndication: exiting is the difficult part.” He searched extensively to find a broker or advisor to sell his LP positions but found nobody specializing in the area. To their credit, the investor group he had assembled stepped up and purchased his positions, albeit at a significant discount.
“Regardless of how cutting edge your technology or how large your investor base, the intermediary and the trust that function creates is still a huge factor in liquidity creation.”
In 2019 Jackson and Simen were introduced following Simen’s move from London to Miami. Jackson’s search for secondary liquidity in the syndicated real estate market struck a chord with Simen. A decade of providing liquidity to some of Europe’s largest institutional investors in the fixed income market had given Simen a unique insight into liquidity creation.
“It was shocking that Jackson wasn’t able to find an intermediary, especially after I learned that there was an outstanding balance of over $1.5 trillion of these equity positions in the United States.”
Ever since that encounter Jackson and Simen have been on a mission to create liquidity, helping investors exit private real estate investments.