426. CRE Lending Through Cycles: Stressed Sponsors, Industrial Conviction, & Today’s Debt Market with Stefanie Stewart, Voya Investment Management
Stephanie Stewart, SVP of Real Estate Investments at Voya Investment Management, discusses her 20-year career spanning the GFC, low-rate environment, and current market cycles. She explains how Voya's diversified capital sources now enable flexible lending across core, transitional, and bridge products, with particular strength in industrial assets and selective exposure to multifamily, hospitality, and stressed-sponsor opportunities.
Summary
Stephanie Stewart shares her career trajectory starting with student housing work in college before joining ING (now Voya) 20 years ago. She reflects on the financial crisis as a formative experience, recounting a specific office deal where an institutional borrower returned keys, which was subsequently sold profitably by the acquirer—teaching her the importance of loan structure and long-term perspective over forced asset liquidation.
Voya's business model has fundamentally transformed from a single life insurance capital source to a diversified platform with approximately 27-28 managed accounts (pension funds, insurance companies), a debt fund with 20+ investors, and general account capital. This enables them to offer a broad menu of debt products—fixed and floating rate core debt, construction, bridge, and value-add loans—averaging just under six years in current loan terms, contrary to the misconception that life insurance lending is exclusively long-term.
Year-to-date, approximately 60% of deployed capital goes to value-add/bridge/transitional products. Stewart identifies attractive opportunities in multifamily (leveraging Class A supply constraints and rent growth), industrial (shallow-bay assets resistant to supply waves, affordable basis in infill locations), hospitality (capital improvement needs post-COVID combined with rate pressures creating acquisition opportunities), and selective core stabilized product (150-200 basis point spreads). She actively avoids data centers, viewing them as lease financing rather than real estate, and takes a cautious approach to outdoor storage (preferring portfolio components over one-offs).
Stewart emphasizes that industrial remains overweight in Voya's strategy because it requires minimal capital for tenant turnover, benefits from basis-lending opportunities in dense infill markets, and has demonstrated resilience when market conditions are properly understood (shallow-bay vs. bulk industrial performance divergence). She expresses ongoing concerns about office space delinquencies in CMBS and the class-B segment, though capital availability and compressed spreads have surprised her.
Key competitive advantages for Voya include in-house asset management and servicing teams (not securitizing floating-rate debt), rapid execution (10-person team deploying $4 billion annually, term sheets within a week), and offering short-term, flexible capital in a market where borrowers prioritize execution certainty and optionality over long-term commitment. She also highlights the emerging opportunity of participation equity structures on ground-up construction (85% LTC with 12-15% equity returns) to address equity-raising challenges for mid-sized sponsors.
Stewart attributes her longevity and success to understanding real estate as a people business, building long-term relationships rather than viewing positions as jobs, and learning through complete market cycles. She sees AI's role as enabling speed and scale in data compilation and market analysis rather than replacing underwriting judgment, allowing her team to maintain execution pace without proportional headcount growth.
About this episode
<p>In this special guest episode of The TreppWire Podcast, we are joined by Stefanie Stewart, Senior Vice President and Head of Real Estate Investments at Voya Investment Management. Drawing on nearly two decades of CRE lending experience, Stefanie discusses how lessons from the GFC continue to shape lending decisions and how Voya’s platform has evolved to meet today’s market. She shares the firm’s approach to deploying capital across stabilized, transitional, and floating-rate debt strategies, why industrial remains a core conviction, and why today’s market requires a stressed-sponsor rather than a stressed-asset approach. We also explore opportunities and headwinds across office and data center lending, as well as the growing role of AI in market analysis and investment decision-making. Tune in now. </p><p><br /></p><p>Episode Notes </p><ul><li>CRE lending through market cycles (2:51) </li><li>Stressed assets vs. stressed sponsors (7:07) </li><li>Evolution of insurance company lending (8:15) </li><li>Bridge, transitional, and core debt strategies (10:36) </li><li>Office market risks and recovery outlook (14:47) </li><li>Industrial real estate opportunities (18:01) </li><li>Capital markets and borrower flexibility (21:24) </li><li>Career advice, relationships, and industry shoutouts (23:29) </li><li>AI and technology in CRE finance (25:43) </li><li>Closing remarks and contact information (27:13) </li></ul><p><br /></p><p>Questions or comments? Contact us at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">[email protected]</a>. </p><p><br /></p><p>Follow Trepp: </p><p>X: <a href="https://www.x.com/TreppWire" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">www.x.com/TreppWire</a> </p><p>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/trepp" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">www.linkedin.com/company/trepp</a> </p>
Key Insights
- Voya's capital structure has evolved from a single life insurance source to 27-28 managed accounts plus a debt fund, enabling the platform to deploy an average loan term of just under six years—contradicting the persistent misconception that life insurance lenders exclusively offer long-term capital.
- Stewart argues that the 2008 financial crisis taught her the critical importance of loan structure and the dangers of forced asset liquidation, leading Voya to develop capacity to hold stressed-sponsor deals (where the sponsor needs help) rather than stressed-asset deals in the current cycle.
- Year-to-date capital deployment shows 60% directed toward value-add/bridge/transitional products, reflecting borrower preference for short-term flexible capital in a higher-rate environment where the misconception of 'hope as a strategy' is no longer viable.
- Voya maintains industrial as an overweight sector specifically because shallow-bay industrial proved resilient to supply waves (unlike bulk industrial), and affordable basis in dense infill locations where new construction is constrained continues to offer value-add opportunities with minimal tenant-turnover capex.
- Stewart identifies in-house asset management and servicing teams (not securitized debt funds) and sub-week term sheet execution as competitive advantages that specifically address borrower demand for certainty of execution in a market where decision timelines have extended due to rate environment uncertainty.
Topics
Transcript
And, you know, real estate is cyclical. We all know that, but sometimes those cycles run long. Hopefully the good ones run longer than the bad ones. Welcome to the Trep Wire podcast, the show where commercial real estate needs data and insights. This is a special guest podcast. I'm Haley Keene with Trep, a data modeling and analytics firm for the CMBS, commercial real estate and CLO markets. I'm with Steven Bushbaum, a data modeling and analytics firm for the CMBS, commercial real estate, and CLO markets. I'm with Stephen Bushbaum, head of applied research and analytics. Today, we are joined by Stephanie Stewart, senior vice president and head of real estate investments at Voya Investment Management, where she…
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