HSF Kramer’s Seth Niedermayer Says Private Capital Is Reshaping Real Estate Deals

HSF Kramer partner Seth Niedermayer is currently juggling 17 transactions, and the majority are being driven by private equity — a snapshot of how institutional capital is reshaping U.S. real estate dealmaking. According to Commercial Observer, his current workload includes partner-side joint ventures, lender and borrower representations on construction loans, and a sale-leaseback transaction.

That mix reflects a broader shift Niedermayer described: more highly structured transactions, greater use of leverage, and a growing debt fund business, all against a backdrop of high interest rates and market uncertainty that is slowing negotiations.

Niedermayer joined HSF Kramer in 2015, when the firm was still known as Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. He arrived from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett as an associate with limited real estate experience, but has since built a client roster that includes Mitsui Fudosan America, Hudson Bay Capital Management, BlackRock, Vici Properties and LCN Capital Partners. His practice spans acquisitions, joint ventures, borrower- and lender-side finance, and development across asset types.

Key Details

Niedermayer’s recent assignments illustrate both the scale and complexity of today’s capital structures.

In 2024, Hudson Bay tapped him for the recapitalization of 620 Avenue of the Americas with RXR; the two firms now jointly own the property. He also represented Hudson Bay in a roughly $238 million refinancing at Edge-on-Hudson, a master-planned development in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. In both cases, the work involved fitting new capital into existing and complicated ownership structures.

Among his largest matters, Niedermayer and colleague Andrew Charles represented Mitsui Fudosan America in its long-running joint venture with Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group at 50 Hudson Yards. He also worked on Vici Properties and Apollo Global Management’s acquisition of the Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip in 2022, a deal he described as involving “a mini city.”

HSF Kramer’s own client mix has changed during Niedermayer’s 11 years at the firm. The developer-heavy work in place when he arrived has shifted, under Jay Neveloff, partner and chair of U.S. real estate at HSF Kramer, toward more institutional, investor-side transactions.

Why It Matters

For commercial real estate professionals, Niedermayer’s pipeline underscores where the market is moving: toward more selective investors, more layered capitalization and more complex negotiations. The old buy-and-hold approach has, in many cases, given way to sophisticated private capital pursuing targeted opportunities.

The source also indicates that higher interest rates have increased the need for more equity and more partners, while some investors are moving away from stable core and core-plus assets and toward more operationally intensive sectors such as data centers and senior living. For lawyers, lenders, sponsors and investors alike, that means execution increasingly depends on navigating complexity rather than simply supplying capital.