Maryland firms CFG Bank and JBG Smith Properties participated in Fifth Wall’s record-setting $866 million fund to invest in startups focused on building new technology for the real estate industry.
New York-based Fifth Wall’s Real Estate Technology Fund III, called the largest PropTech fund in history, has over a dozen other investors. They include: Annaly Capital Management, Arbor Realty Trust, bpifrance, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, employees of Northwood Investors, Equity Residential, Essent, Granite Properties, Hines, Invitation Homes, Keppel Corp., Koch Real Estate Investments, Lineage Ventures, Meritage Homes, The Moinian Group, Move, Physicians Realty Trust and PulteGroup.
Fifth Wall has about $3.2 billion in assets under management, and raised over a billion dollars this year. In July, it closed a $500 million climate fund and a $147 million fund for Europe in February.
Real Estate’s Banker
Baltimore-based Capital Funding Group was founded by Jack Dwyer in 1993. In 2009, Dwyer formed Capital Funding Bancorp, integrating the acquisition of AmericasBank Corp. and its subsidiary, AmericasBank. CFG Bank is a full-service bank, providing finance, investing and advisory solutions. In the first half of 2022, it advanced $1.8 billion to healthcare and multifamily industries, and remains a significant player in the FHA/ HUD-insured mortgage lending.
Dwyer is a veteran of the FHA-insured mortgage industry with over 30 years’ experience. He is a HUD approved underwriter and has financed over $7 billion in FHA-insured mortgages. In 2021, Dwyer was named winner of Daily Record’s Influential Marylander in the finance category.
Big Player in D.C.
JBG Smith, headquartered in Bethesda, Md., is a significant real estate player in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Its portfolio comprises 15.6 million square feet of commercial, multi-family, and retail assets — with another 9.8 million square feet in development. Its office portfolio of over 8 million square feet is primarily located in Downtown D.C., National Landing, the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, Reston, Va., and Bethesda, Md.
The firm is led by CEO Matt Kelly, an 18-year JBG veteran. He was previously a managing partner of JBG Companies and also co-headed JBG’s Investments Group. Prior to joining JBG, Kelly worked for Thomas H. Lee Partners in Boston and Goldman Sachs in New York. He is also the co-founder of ODAC, a media software company.
Hybrid Fund
Fifth Wall’s first fund has been termed hybrid because it would invest in both early-stage and late-stage startups. It uses two vehicles for investments — Fifth Wall Early Stage Ventures, L.P. would back startups at the seed to series B stage, while Fifth Wall Fund III, L.P. would invest in companies at the growth equity or Series C stage and beyond.
“When we started Fifth Wall in 2016, PropTech was not yet a term. Since then we believe that we played an intrinsic role in the ecosystem’s evolution and continue to propel it forward not only via capital, but industry awareness and strategic collaboration between our startups and real estate limited partners,” said Brendan Wallace, co-founder and managing partner of Fifth Wall. “It’s the natural next step that we’d expand the aperture, deploying two vehicles that enable us to invest from seed to IPO. It signifies our commitment to the ecosystem as it navigates the next wave.”
With its newest fund, Fifth Wall has over 110 strategic limited partners from more than 15 different countries.
