The Rent Roll with Jay Parsons EP#69 Michael Comparato | Where's All The Distress?
Jan 29, 2026
Michael Comparato, president and head of commercial real estate at Benefit Street Partners, brings banking roots and multifamily lending expertise. He discusses why distress is concentrated in older, lower-quality apartments. Short timelines on who will buy Class C assets, how private credit is reshaping lending, and what might finally push larger waves of distressed sales.
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Prefer Short Bridge Loans On Newer Assets
- Target newer vintage, higher-quality multifamily in large liquid markets for short-duration bridge credit.
- Use floating-rate, shorter loans to capture spreads while assets stabilize over 12–24 months.
Three-Punch Market Mistake
- The industry mispriced multifamily by treating all vintages as the same, creating a painful unwind for older, lower-quality assets.
- Michael calls this a three-punch combo: supply, higher rates, and commoditization of multifamily.
Who Can Buy Distressed C Assets
- Buyers for distressed older assets will likely be specialist operators like Morgan Properties who scale workforce-housing operations.
- But they require meaningful cap-rate spreads versus newer assets before deploying capital.