L.A.’s Most Powerful

It’s time for Commercial Observer’s annual list of the most powerful figures in Los Angeles-area commercial real estate. Multifamily and industrial players take starring turns as do a fair number of retail owners. Check out who made the cut. Also for today, Jim Flynn, CEO of lending platform Lument, talks interest rates and investment sales as 2023 enters its endgame.

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— Tom Acitelli, Deputy Editor

LA LA Land Is Quiet … Too Quiet

Hollywood and its entertainment machine regularly echo through Commercial Observer’s list of most powerful real estate players in the Los Angeles area. But, today, those treasured soundstages and studios that have long defined Los Angeles are empty. The effects of the ongoing labor disputes between actors, writers and massive conglomerate-level production companies — such as Disney, Warner Bros. and Comcast — are raising new questions about the longevity of demand, especially considering the unprecedented surge in studio development projects currently in the pipeline. Thus, although Labor Day has passed, it’s still the Summer of Strikes in Los Angeles.

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Lument CEO Jim Flynn Talks Multifamily Outlook Amid Higher Interest Rates

James P. (Jim) Flynn played an instrumental role in the creation of Lument during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and now is looking to guide the commercial real estate lending platform through more storm clouds. Lument was created in 2020 following Orix USA’s acquisition of Hunt Real Estate Capital, where Flynn had been president and chief investment officer for more than three years. Flynn was tapped to create the Lument brand in early 2020 after helping to grow Hunt’s annual originations by 80 percent and its servicing portfolio by over $3 billion. Since the Lument brand became official in November 2020 eight months into the pandemic, Flynn has helped grow its servicing portfolio in excess of $50 billion and total annual transactions to nearly $16 billion, focusing largely on multifamily, affordable housing and health care deals.

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