As family offices become more selective about private real estate, their scrutiny extends beyond the underlying asset to governance, financing and alignment of interests. Nour Hassouna, Investor Development Associate at LUCKY OLDSTONE shares her perspective on these evolving expectations and the factors that make an opportunity investable. Founded in 2015, the firm supports real estate professionals through financial engineering, banking intermediation and property transactions.
How is access to non-listed real estate for family offices evolving today, and what are the main friction points?
Access to non-listed real estate has clearly become broader, but also more selective.
Family offices today can access a much wider range of formats than before: direct acquisitions, club deals, private debt, co-investments, dedicated vehicles, and operating platforms. In that sense, the market is richer. But the counterpart is that access alone is no longer enough. What matters now is the quality of the filtering, the clarity of the structure, and the ability to read what truly sits behind the opportunity.
The main friction points we see are often the same. First, visibility: investors want to understand the asset, the sponsor, the capital structure, and the exit route in a much more concrete way. Second, alignment: in the current market, investors pay close attention to who is taking risk, who is remunerated first, and whether interests are genuinely aligned throughout the life of the transaction. Third, execution: in non-listed real estate, the asset is only one part of the story. The quality of the sponsor, the legal structure, the financing conditions, and the operational follow-through are equally decisive.
In practice, we see many family offices still very interested in private real estate, but with a much lower tolerance for opacity. They do not want “product”; they want readable situations, understandable risk, and a credible route from entry to exit.
In the transactions you observe, which factors are becoming most decisive in structuring deals?
Several factors have become increasingly decisive, and they often say more about the quality of a transaction than the headline return itself.
The first is ticket size. Not because one ticket size is better than another, but because it determines the type of investor who can participate and the level of concentration they are willing to accept. Some investors want direct and visible exposure to one asset or one operation; others prefer more diversified formats. A well-structured operation must take that into account from the beginning.
The second is liquidity, or at least visibility on liquidity. Private investors understand that non-listed real estate is not a liquid market, but they want to know how long capital is expected to be tied up, what the exit assumptions are, what the refinancing logic is, and what happens if the initial business plan takes longer than expected.
Governance has also become central. In today’s environment, investors want to know who makes decisions, how conflicts are handled, how reporting is organized, and what level of information they will receive throughout the life of the operation.
Finally, alignment of interests has become one of the first things sophisticated investors look at. We see this in practice: investors ask very quickly who the sponsor is, how much capital they have committed, what fees exist at each level, and whether the people structuring the operation are genuinely exposed to the same outcome. In our experience, that is often what distinguishes a financeable transaction from one that remains theoretical.
What makes an operation truly suitable for a private investor today?
A transaction is suitable for a private investor when it is both intelligible and proportionate to the investor’s objectives.
That means the opportunity must first be readable. The asset, the location, the use case, the value-creation logic, and the exit route must be understandable without requiring the investor to be a full-time operator. This does not mean the project must be simple; it means the structure must make sense.
The second point is that the sponsor must be assessable. Private investors today are far less sensitive to presentation quality than to execution credibility. They want to know whether the operator has really done this before, whether the assumptions are grounded, and whether the structure protects them if things take longer or become more complex.
The third point is that format matters. A direct equity operation, a private debt strategy, and a co-investment vehicle do not answer the same investor need. Some private investors want yield and downside protection, others want visibility and upside, others still want strategic access to a certain market. The right operation is the one where the asset, the structure, and the investor profile are coherent with one another.
In our experience, what makes an operation truly suitable today is not only the quality of the real estate. It is the quality of the translation between the opportunity and the investor.
How is the connection between investors and opportunities actually built, from sourcing to structuring?
In reality, this connection is built much earlier than the moment an opportunity is presented.
The first step is sourcing, but sourcing in itself is not enough. In markets like Paris, a significant number of transactions circulate, yet only a limited portion are truly investable once one looks at the sponsor, the financing, the timing, the legal framework, and the exit assumptions.
The real work begins with selection.
Then comes the structuring phase. This is where the opportunity has to be qualified: is it suitable for direct equity, for club deal capital, for private debt, for one investor, for several, for a vehicle, or for a bilateral format? In practice, many transactions fail not because the underlying asset is weak, but because the structure is not adapted to the investor base being approached.
Only after this filtering and framing does investor matching begin. And even there, the quality of the process matters. Investors do not want to be shown every opportunity. They want to be shown the right opportunity, in the right format, with the right level of detail.
This is where our role becomes important. We spend a significant amount of time upstream, before any introduction is made, to determine whether a transaction is really financeable and for whom. For example, we may review an operation that initially appears suited to a broad capital raise, and conclude that it is in fact much better adapted to one or two investors only, because concentration, governance, and speed of execution matter more than volume. That kind of adjustment is often what makes a transaction realistic.
In markets such as Paris, has risk assessment become more complex for non-operating investors?
Yes, clearly.
Paris remains one of the most resilient and deepest real estate markets in Europe, but that should not be confused with simplicity. In recent years, risk assessment has become more granular. The differences between two assets in the same district, or even on the same street, can be considerable once one looks at use, micro-location, sponsor quality, tenant profile, repositioning potential, or timing.
For a non-operating investor, that makes the reading of risk more demanding than before. It is no longer enough to say that Paris is a defensive market. One has to ask: which segment, which location, what entry basis, what sponsor, what financing conditions, what permitting exposure, what exit depth?
This is particularly true in transitional or value-add situations. In these cases, the real risk often lies less in the city itself than in the details of execution. We see that very often: a project may appear attractive on a high-level basis, but the true investment case depends on construction phasing, administrative timing, leasing assumptions, or refinancing visibility. For a non-operating investor, these are not always easy to read without local and structural expertise.
That is why the quality of intermediation matters. The role is not simply to “show Paris real estate,” but to make the risk legible.
How do you see the role of non-listed real estate evolving in family office allocations over the medium term?
We believe non-listed real estate will remain an important component of family office allocations, but in a more selective and more intentional way.
For many years, private real estate was often approached as a broad allocation bucket. Today, it is becoming more differentiated. Investors are increasingly distinguishing between income strategies, secured debt, direct equity, operating platforms, student housing, hospitality, logistics, and special situations. In other words, non-listed real estate is no longer one category; it is a set of different exposures with very different risk-return profiles.
Over the medium term, we believe three trends will remain strong.
The first is the continued demand for real assets with tangible downside protection. The second is the growing interest in sectors supported by structural demand, such as student housing and certain living or logistics formats. The third is the increasing importance of governance and structure. Family offices still want private-market exposure, but they want it in a way that is more readable, more aligned, and more controllable.
We also see that some family offices are becoming more open to combining formats: direct investments in certain situations, private debt in others, and more selective use of funds or club deals when diversification or execution requires it. That flexibility, in our view, will continue to shape allocations going forward.
In this environment, at what point and in what way does your organisation intervene in the chain between opportunity identification and allocation to private investors?
We intervene well before the transaction reaches the investor.
Our role begins at the level of sourcing and analysis. That means identifying selected opportunities, assessing whether they are genuinely financeable, reviewing the sponsor and the structure, and understanding what type of investor or capital solution may be appropriate. In many cases, this early-stage qualification work is where the real value lies.
We then intervene in the structuring and positioning of the transaction. That may mean helping define the right format, clarifying the risk for the investor, reviewing the alignment of interests, or making sure that the way the opportunity is presented corresponds to the expectations of the type of capital being approached.
In practice, our work is often that of a bridge. On one side, there are sponsors or operators who know their real estate project extremely well. On the other, there are investors who need the transaction to be intelligible, structured, and investable from their perspective. Bridging that gap requires both market knowledge and execution discipline.
That is how we see our role at Lucky Oldstone. Not simply as a point of access to opportunities, but as a partner involved throughout the chain that turns a real estate situation into a transaction that can realistically be understood, structured, and allocated.
This is especially important today, because investors are not looking for volume. They are looking for relevance, selectivity, and clarity.
