Unlocking Scale with Local Residential Expertise
In this Private Debt Investor Mid-Market Lending Report article, Adam Baghdadi, head of lending solutions at Arrow Global, examines how to scale lending successfully across Europe’s fragmented residential real estate market. He highlights rising opportunities in Southern Europe’s prime hospitality sector while maintaining strong activity in the UK. Adam explains how differences in property laws, enforcement processes, and planning frameworks shape Arrow’s lending strategies, and he identifies Germany as a market where borrower distress is emerging due to previously aggressive capital structures. Stressing the critical role of local expertise, he outlines how Arrow uses its network of 24 platforms and extensive servicing capabilities to manage operational complexity, harness data, and enhance underwriting through AI. The article ultimately shows how local presence, specialist knowledge, and forward-thinking strategies are vital to scaling granular residential investments across diverse European markets.
“It is a very attractive time to be lending across prime hospitality real estate in the region.”
“It is vital to have a local approach. If you are underwriting a granular set of residential properties in Portugal, for example, you need an experienced team on the ground, including local valuers with market knowledge and insights into the liquidity of those assets.”
“In markets where legal challenges from an enforcement perspective are more complex, it is possible to structure around that.”
“The interest rate environment is making it unsustainable for certain capital structures to continue as they are – in many cases, a restructuring or refinancing is required.”
Featured in Private Debt Investor’s Mid-Market Lending Report (June edition)
Adam Baghdadi
Managing Director, Lending
Adam Baghdadi is a Managing Director in the Arrow central investment team focused on lending. He has over 13 years of investment experience in credit, lending and corporate finance.
Previously Adam was a member of the investment team at Sixth Street in London, where he worked across a range of credit and special situation transactions with a focus on hard asset and real estate backed opportunities. Prior to that Adam was an investment analyst at HBK, a global credit-oriented multi-strategy hedge fund, where he worked across a range of corporate and structured credit strategies. Adam started his career at Morgan Stanley in the UK Investment Banking team, where he worked across a range of public M&A, takeover defence and debt and equity capital markets transactions.
Adam holds an MA in Economics and Management (1st class honours) from Oxford University.