Former Mosaic Exec Launches Credit Platform

Vicky Schiff, CEO, Avrio Real Estate Credit. Image courtesy of Avrio Real Estate Credit

Vicky Schiff, a commercial real estate and finance veteran who was most recently co-founder & managing partner of Mosaic Real Estate Investors, has launched Avrio Real Estate Credit in partnership with Dream Unlimited Corp. and PaulsCorp LLC. Headquartered in Denver, the firm also has offices in New York, Toronto and Los Angeles.

Avrio will offer short-term, first mortgage debt and other structured finance products including B notes, mezzanine debt and preferred equity for the acquisition, refinancing and recapitalization of commercial real estate assets, with loans ranging from $25 million to $150 million.

Schiff, who is the CEO of Avrio, told Commercial Property Executive the firm is focused on the upper middle market, which they believe is being underserved because of the dislocation in the capital markets.

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The national platform will be seeking transactions in all asset classes but will be weighted toward industrial and housing-related transactions. Avrio has several deals in the pipeline but Schiff declined to discuss them at this time.

“We are going to be looking at all opportunities including construction lending, in which we have significant experience,” Schiff told CPE.

In addition to financing new development and value-add projects that utilize energy-efficient and green construction materials, methods or systems, Avrio will work with borrowers who create jobs, encourage education and employee engagement and who are dedicated to building projects that help expand the inventory of workforce, affordable and transitional housing, she said in prepared remarks.

Asked how the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and concerns about other regional banks could impact CRE lending, Schiff told CPE “we think the additional dislocation provides a widespread opportunity across the U.S.”

Schiff left Mosaic in July 2021, when real estate manager Lubert-Adler Real Estate Funds invested in a pool of assets owned by Mosaic Real Estate Investors and bought out Schiff’s interests. She had co-founded Mosaic as well as MREC Management LLC, and Mosaic Real Estate Credit LLC, in 2015 with Ethan Penner. During her six years with Mosaic, the company became a leader in the debt fund space with originations surpassing $3 billion. In addition to Mosaic, Schiff has successfully founded or co-founded four other firms since 1996 in various sectors of the real estate and private equity business.

Focusing on sustainability

Michael Cooper, co-founder & chief responsible officer at Canadian-based Dream, said in a prepared statement that, given the current supply gap of available debt to meet the needs of real estate operators and developers in the U.S., Avrio will play a critical role in bringing flexible and creative debt funding to developers searching for this type of instrument. Avrio represents Dream’s entry into the U.S. credit market.

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Cooper noted that Dream, which has more than C$23 billion in assets throughout North America and Europe under management, places a strong emphasis on sustainability across all of its strategies. He said Avrio fits well within Dream’s goals of building better communities in its markets. One of Canada’s leading real estate firms, Dream has 12 offices across Canada, the U.S. and Europe and is a leading developer of office and residential assets in Toronto and develops land and residential assets in Western Canada. The public company also operates a private asset management business.

Avrio will use a specialized process, developed with Dream’s sustainability and ESG team, to collect, analyze and report on ESG data in a streamlined manner, intended to help external partners and borrowers to improve their assets’ ESG scores, attributes and overall impacts on their communities and the environment.