Celebrities and actual property are simple if lazy bedfellows.
Most are glad with mailbox cash. Some, post-retirement, get into the weeds after they retire — like A-Rod, now Mr. Florida Multifamily.
Few, although, fall in love with the precise grunt work.
Ryan Tedder did.
Most will know him because the lead singer of OneRepublic, the pop-rock band behind “Counting Stars,” an earworm of the early 2010s, “Apologize,” feat. Timbaland — one other radio favourite. He’s sustained a decades-long profession as a entrance man, songwriter and producer. He co-wrote Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning shimmery ballad “Halo,” Taylor Swift’s ode “Welcome to New York.” He has writing and producing credit on 4 of tracks of Okay-pop darling BTS’ album, “Arirang,” which was launched in March.
On the identical time, he’s custom-built a portfolio of economic actual property that can quickly high $1 billion in property underneath administration: 3 million sq. ft throughout 12 states and a menagerie of asset courses. He owns manufacturing in Wisconsin, residence buildings in Florida, sweeping workplace holdings in Las Vegas, the place he’s additionally growing “Halo Tower,” the realm’s largest workplace constructing. Plus: a automobile wash, a Walgreens, an FBI constructing.
The underlying thesis is fundamental: Purchase value-add “in locations the place folks stay and must go do stuff.”
Tedder hard-launched himself as an investor in 2021. Rolling Stone coated the debut with a splashy Q&A. (He’d offered off a majority stake in his music catalogue a couple of months earlier, an indication of the shift to return.)
However he’s not new to the sport. He taught himself the fundamentals over the course of 20 years, getting his begin by studying how-to books on investing and asking round at Hollywood dinner events for recommendations on the place to place the cash he made in music.
Now, the mentee is turning into the mentor.
Tedder is opening his associate pool to the community of connections he’s constructed throughout his grind within the {industry} by inviting and educating award-winning artists, disenchanted with the vicious cycle of musicmaking, to get in on what he envisions as a banner yr for actual property offers.
He’s obsessed with giving singers and songwriters an offramp from an {industry} that can’t present a dependable paycheck.
On the identical time, he’s absolutely embodying the position of the investor.
“He’s not a music man who invests in actual property; he’s an actual property man who invests in music,” Nelson Braff, one in all Tedder’s repeat companions and shut collaborators, mentioned.
The Actual Deal met Tedder on a Chinatown nook in mid-June to view his first whole-building buy in Manhattan: a four-story workplace tower with a Citibank anchor at 168 Canal Avenue. Tedder and his companions paid $40.5 million for it, two-thirds of its earlier sale value of $62 million in 2013. (A doc for one associate within the deal, Datepalm Canal Holdings, was signed by Diana Carone, spouse to Frank Carone, the previous Eric Adams chief of employees who was arrested in June on federal bribery fees linked to a migrant shelter contract. Braff mentioned the Carones had been introduced in by one other associate.)
Even with the low value, the constructing may appear boring, but it surely’s an essential pickup for an investor who’s made most of his cash in second- and third-tier cities. (Tedder beforehand purchased a retail condominium in Carnegie Hill, which he offered lately; he nonetheless owns one in all two condos he purchased at The Witkoff Group and Fisher Brothers’ 111 Murray Street and a CVS on Metropolitan Avenue in Queens.)
To Tedder, the financial institution department purchase is a pattern wager on New York. He’s of the thoughts that the perceived anti-real estate bent of the Mamdani administration will spook sufficient buyers to create a gap available in the market.
His guesstimate is that one in 5 buyers — the “informal” type — will step again, making house for him and others to step in.
“That is my concept,” the previous New Yorker mentioned throughout an on-camera interview for TRD. He imbued his confidence with a little bit of humility — a key distinction of his character. “I don’t know the way correct that is.”
Taken in mixture, it’s an enormous transfer for an investor whose present New York Metropolis footprint consists solely of a drugstore and a four-story value-add workplace constructing — and it provides a peek into what seems to be like the beginning of a grand actual property play.
Cross pollination
Tedder, 47, has been a working musician for the reason that mid-’90s. He gained his first Grammy for Adele’s sophomore album “21” — named after the songstress’ age — when he was solely 32 and already questioning how lengthy he may maintain himself on hitmaking. And over his tenure he’s constructed an ever-expanding universe of connections throughout music and enterprise.
These touchpoints are what he’s tapping to make actual property groove for him.
After I met Tedder at SummerStage in balmy (humid) Central Park, a couple of days earlier than the solstice, it was about 20 minutes to set time. OneRepublic was enjoying a non-public present. Backstage, amid amped-up tech guys and lounging roadies, it was enterprise as typical to Tedder. The viewers was the monetary companies agency PwC.
He doesn’t get nervous, he mentioned. The set record was routine: “Simply the hits.” He’d simply been scribbling throughout a desk of autographs laid out like a recreation of Reminiscence.
What was riling him up: funding potential.
“Actually, the final particular person I used to be talking with is their head of workplace leasing,” he mentioned of PwC.
“That’s what’s enjoyable about doing these gigs typically,” he added. A present with Residence Depot or Walmart may evolve right into a tête-à-tête on lease extensions in a market he simply stopped in for a present. Say: Salt Lake Metropolis — a significant tech hub and one of many nation’s top-growth cities, “that’s simply on a tear.”
“It doesn’t at all times work,” he mentioned of discovering offers on the highway. “But it surely’s the double life.”
“I’m on a textual content thread with all these guys and ladies now they usually’re like: ‘Feed us the subsequent deal; what are you doing? How a lot can we have now?’”
Tedder additionally has the good thing about a cross-industry popularity. He can cinch conferences with the best echelons of world funding.
He had a sit-down with BlackRock slotted for after the present. He’d linked up with the agency’s actual property group by the use of Rick Rieder, its head of fastened revenue, a couple of weeks prior.
Even when Tedder places on his metaphorical funding hat, he usually retains to his OneRepublic type, refined over years on the band’s entrance: band tee, cargo pants and shades.
In his major world — music manufacturing — that’s pretty buttoned up.
“Actually, I may most likely present up with out a shirt, pajamas, no sneakers, like consuming a smoothie, smoking a joint, if I wished,” he mentioned. (“I’m truly describing one particular one who’s a really profitable producer,” he added. He didn’t identify a reputation, however inquiring minds can Google.)
Tedder, for all his stage confidence, does get imposter syndrome within the convention room: “I really feel like they’re gonna haul me out of there.”
However that’s simply the mistimed stage fright. He mentioned his first assembly with BlackRock was a win: They had been impressed together with his portfolio and completely satisfied to get in on the debt or fairness aspect.
On the day of the PwC present, Tedder and his group had been mulling over two New York Metropolis offers — one retail, one workplace. He declined to share particulars however mentioned they might probably lock down one earlier than he headed to Madrid for a summer-long European tour.
Braff, who additionally billed himself as Tedder’s “casual cash supervisor,” confirmed a couple of days later that conversations remained in early levels.
Tedder, by the holding firm Patriot Actual Property, and one other collaborator, mortgage dealer Keith Kantrowitz, did unload 1295 Madison Avenue, a retail condominium on the Higher East Facet, for $13 million, a couple of days later. It’s unclear if the transactions had been associated. Tedder mentioned he solely deliberate to purchase one constructing within the metropolis.
“Bear in mind these partitions I constructed?”
“Halo Tower,” his largest industrial endeavor thus far, does add an enormous notch to Tedder’s belt — experience-wise.
The Las Vegas workplace constructing, which he and group Moonwater Capital — an area store run by the father-son group Ofir and Don Hagay — broke floor in June. The duo expects it to be the most important single-standing workplace tower within the Better Metropolitan Space: eight tales, 220,000 sq. ft. Most workplace within the space is industrial sprawl, company parks.
For Tedder, who till now has completely invested in small, surefire offers, it’s an enormous swing: a $130 million venture. The group expects to be prepared to start out building on the finish of August and ship in two years.
The wager, primarily, is that Las Vegas’ inhabitants growth retains rippling. The Hagays mentioned firms and residents are coming in, particularly Californians fleeing excessive taxes. “With out stepping into politics, thanks Gavin,” Don Hagay mentioned.
“Halo,” named after the Beyoncé hit, to Tedder’s admitted cringe (it took a couple of tries for his group to put on him down), is “effectively outdoors the bounds of my threat aperture.”
“I’ll solely take outsized threat if the outsized reward is dramatically previous the outsized threat,” he mentioned over Zoom. “That’s what this constructing is.”
Cash issues to Tedder. Not in an accumulation-of-wealth manner, however in a safety-net sense.
The musician grew up decrease center class in Colorado Springs. He has the standard story of triumph in Los Angeles: moved to town on bank cards and about $85,000 in faculty debt (he adjusted for inflation on the Zoom name) and hit it large to world success.
As OneRepublic was cementing itself on the Billboard High 100, he remembers tales of music managers working away with their purchasers’ earnings polluting the ether.
Lou Pearlman, who managed *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys, earned a 25-year federal jail sentence for working one of many largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. historical past.
“That terrified me,” Tedder mentioned.
About that point, he had dinner at a music supervisor’s residence — “a loopy home close to the Beverly Hills Resort” — who tossed out a warning that grew to change into the underpinning of Tedder’s monetary plan.
“He’s like: You get a file deal, you generate income in music — everybody will come after you; it’ll vanish faster than you recognize,” the entrance man remembers.
The recommendation: “He mentioned — ‘Simply be good and skim up on it and put your cash into actual property. Don’t pour it again into music; put it into actual property.’”
Happily, Tedder has the love bug for each the intercourse enchantment of acquisitions and the much-less-hot trivia of long-term technique.
He does his personal analyses, like discovering the highest 10 development markets for the approaching 5 years and cross-tabulating with the best inhabitants enhance and year-over-year revenue will increase.
He faucets Claude to comb by listings every day and is coaching the scary-strong AI assistant to perform as a first-tier underwriter on offers. He additionally works with the human Keith Kantrowitz of the New York agency Energy Specific Mortgage Bankers. Kantrowitz, whose MRK Properties is on New York Metropolis deeds together with Tedder’s agency, says the musician can take a look at any itemizing and run it at “any cap, any LTV, any metric” in his head and “is rarely improper.”
“I wouldn’t be as deep as I’m with out him — interval,” Kantrowitz mentioned of how far he’s gone down the true property rabbit gap.
Tedder additionally likes the tried-and-true Crexi or LoopNet, which he browses whereas he’s jet-setting from one tour cease to the subsequent. If he’s heading right into a city, he is aware of the place cap charges are at, what asset courses are performing over others, the place there’s extra occupancy available earlier than landing.
“I’ve a pulse for sort of each main metropolis in America,” he mentioned.
Tedder additionally favors the visible tells: “I’m cranes.”
In New York, Tedder does see 168 Canal Avenue as a contrarian funding: He believes many are leaving the market, so he’s stepping in. At Canal, different would-be consumers appeared to deal with Citibank, the constructing’s ground-floor tenant, being towards the tip of its lease. However Tedder’s group famous the financial institution’s above-average deposits and gambled that it might renew.
There’s different empirical proof for the established order. Dan Marks, principal of brokerage TerraCRG, mentioned some sellers have grumbled in regards to the state of metropolis politics.
“I believe it’s actually about what politics can truly go and what sort of impression we’re going to see available on the market,” Marks mentioned.
That’s, not a lot has occurred but that may impression workplace, particularly — and truly workplace leasing is again monitoring 2018 ranges. Mamdani has backed, and the New York State Legislature handed, a tax on pieds-à-terre in New York Metropolis, the type of actual property the rich usually personal. However that’s unlikely to scare buyers into dropping property or leaving town.
The musician’s purpose over the subsequent yr is growth. His favored asset class is industrial. His market proper now: New York.
“I don’t have any delusions of grandeur about being the subsequent SL Inexperienced or [Steve] Witkoff,” he mentioned. “I don’t wish to be in The Actual Dealevery week.”
“My ambition was to offer a secure place for me to speculate cash to guard my household and buddies,” he added. “Pull it out of music and put it into actual property.”
Tedder offered nearly all of his catalog — recorded music and publishing rights — to KKR in January 2021, a couple of months earlier than he went public together with his actual property enterprise in Rolling Stone.
In concord
The goal comes from disgust with an absence of the monetary stability for artists. The possibility of reaching safety has gotten decrease and decrease since he began making music. Over the course of three interviews, this was the subject he was most obsessed with, much more than actual property itself.
The appearance of streaming companies, similar to Spotify, means musicians make tiny fractions of a cent for every digital play. There are extra writers than ever earlier than on most hits, so even in case you’re on a success music or album, you’re splitting royalties with 5 different contributors.
Radio nonetheless pays, Tedder mentioned. However many songs don’t make it to the airwaves.
Amongst his longtime buddies and collaborators, curiosity has grown in constructing a backstop in order to not get pulled underneath by the {industry}. Tedder needs to present them an offramp from the relentless album cycle: musician writes, data, releases, excursions and begins all of it once more.
It’s an exhausting routine that Tedder excels at. He credit a mix of working, water and the superhuman jolt of well-directed ADHD.
He supplied a couple of names who’ve stepped in on offers with him thus far: Shaboozey, multi-genre rapper, who swept the 2026 music awards season (investor in a future “Tipsy Tower”?), and Amy Allen, the prolific author and producer who gained the Songwriter of the 12 months Grammy for a Sabrina Carpenter music (think about a “Manchild Mansion”). Tedder doesn’t syndicate fairness, he mentioned. Reasonably, he raises from a “household of companions, a bunch of New Yorkers,” who may kick in $2 million on a $10 million deal. He aspires to have extra songwriters in that funding compilation.
Tedder, working off the boldness Shaboozey and Allen will “with out query” spend money on his different offers, has been increasing his reachouts, organising conferences with different songwriters.
“Sort of like actual property espresso hour,” he mentioned — two-hour coffees the place he explains the soup-to-nuts of investing.
“I’m on a textual content thread with all these guys and ladies now they usually’re like: ‘Feed us the subsequent deal; what are you doing? How a lot can we have now?’”
The artists, it appears, wish to construct.
