Piasecki, Prager and Zukerman join Lev

 

 

 

 

New York, NY According to Lev, a technology company focused on modernizing commercial real estate transactions, Justin Piasecki, managing partner; Aaron Prager, director; and Avi Zukerman, director, have joined the firm as it continues to expand its offering of additional services in commercial real estate finance to handle the entirety of the transaction.

Piasecki, Prager and Zukerman are joining Lev after working together for more than nine years at Avison Young. During their careers, they have closed over $15 billion in transactions across all property types for a plethora of institutional and family office clients.

Even amongst the market turmoil and uncertainty of 2020, they negotiated and closed numerous complex transactions, including a $115 million bridge loan for a five-story office building in Nashville; $157 million in financing for the development of 849 rental units in Santa Monica; and $150 million for six renovations and a development site in Santa Monica and the San Fernando Valley area.

Looking toward 2021 and beyond, Piasecki felt that Lev’s unique blend of market-leading technology and capital markets expertise would be the perfect platform for another decade of tremendous growth, while defining the evolution of the complex world of commercial real estate finance.

“We join Lev at a tumultuous time in the market, but we know that technology will be the biggest driver for growth and differentiation moving forward in the commercial real estate space and we want to help define that path for the future,” said Piasecki. “As I looked at where the market was going, I realized that Yaakov and the team at Lev were leading the path towards the future of how these transactions will happen.”

“There are few people who are so knowledgeable about the depth and technicalities of commercial real estate finance, while also having so much foresight into how the industry will evolve,” said Yaakov Zar, founder and CEO of Lev. “As we work towards $2 billion of transactions this year and expand into additional service offerings, we’re extremely excited to bring Justin, Aaron and Avi to the team. We know that together, we’ll be able to have an outsized impact on the CREF experience.”