JOSS trio brings 32-deal record to Stewards Real Assets

Stewards Inc. has gone shopping for an underwriting history, and on Sept. 2 it said it found one at JOSS Realty. Larry Botel, Jamie DeRevere and Jake Tolkin will join the Fort Lauderdale financial platform, bringing JOSS's record of 32 completed real estate acquisitions and more than $1.2 billion in value into Stewards Real Assets.

Botel founded JOSS Realty Partners in 2005, and since then the firm has acquired roughly 3.4 million square feet of commercial office and multifamily property across major U.S. markets while running core, core-plus, value-add and opportunistic strategies, according to the announcement. At an average of about $38 million per acquisition, the record is a sequence of project-level underwriting decisions rather than a couple of oversized wins—the kind of evidence an allocator wants before trusting a freshly built real assets platform. Stewards said the trio will add institutional strength across acquisition, underwriting, due diligence, asset management and investment strategy, the full ownership cycle of a real assets investor.

The hire advances Stewards Real Assets, itself a step in a broader plan to build across private credit, income-producing real assets and technology-enabled financial infrastructure. Real assets, the company said, can bring recurring income, tangible value and diversification next to those lines of business. Chairman Glen Steward argued in the release that the business depends on judgment—people who screen opportunities, price risk and stick with properties through the whole ownership cycle—a formula that puts experienced people ahead of capital.

So far as the announcement shows, this is a hire of people rather than a sale of assets. Financial terms are not stated, and whether JOSS's existing properties will follow into Stewards Real Assets is not addressed.

The RIA talent wars have made that pattern familiar: destination platforms import tested teams because buying a track record is cheaper than building one. Stewards has now done the same in real assets, wagering that underwriting judgment is scarcer than the money waiting to be deployed. The acquisitions Stewards announces with this team attached will show whether the wager pays.