“It’s finding the next one.”
Shaun Riney and Andrew Bronstein sat down with Greg Fournier — managing principal of Greenbrook Partners, one of the most quietly prolific operators in Brooklyn multifamily. Greg doesn’t do much press. That makes this conversation worth paying attention to.
Greenbrook has deployed over $1.5 billion in equity, owns roughly 450 buildings across 20 Brooklyn neighborhoods, employs 150 people, and just closed a $486 million refinance with Freddie Mac through Invesco — covering 260 properties, roughly half the portfolio. Here’s what I took away.
It Started With One Deal
In 2018, Greg and his partner Fred closed their first deal. $10 million purchase price. $5 million of equity needed. They called everyone they knew — friends, family, anyone who could write a check between $50,000 and $500,000. They got it done.
Six months later they did it again. The year after that, 10 times. The year after that, 33. By the end of 2019 they had a programmatic institutional partner and the business hit a different gear entirely.
Whatever they made, they reinvested into the business.
The 50-Building Inflection Point
Up to about 50 buildings, they ran lean — six to eight people doing everything. Then, as Greg put it, “you can sense that the wheels might come off.”
That’s the moment most operators either plateau or break. For Greenbrook, it was the signal to start making strategic hires, building systems, and investing in infrastructure even when the cash flow wasn’t screaming for it. Trial by fire. No silver bullet. Just a willingness to reinvest before it became an emergency.
The Freddie Mac Refi: What It Actually Means
Freddie Mac doesn’t typically lend on New York City real estate. The regulatory complexity, the litigation risk, the scattered-site nature of small multifamily — it’s not their world. The fact that Greenbrook qualified for a $486 million GSE facility is the institutional stamp of approval on a product type that the market has never fully respected at scale.
The Underwriting Framework
Greg broke down how Greenbrook underwrites an acquisition in plain math. It’s worth repeating exactly.
If you can buy at $650 a foot, and renovation runs $150 a foot, you’re all-in at $800. If market rent in that submarket is $75 a foot and operating expenses run $15, your net income is $60 a foot. $60 over $800 is a 7.5% yield on cost.
That’s the number they’re solving for. 7.5% yield on cost. Everything else — location, layout, unit mix — feeds into whether you can hit that math.
The reason this works in Brooklyn while it doesn’t in most Sunbelt markets right now is the spread. Cap rates on New York middle-market product have blown out to 6-6.5 cap — historically those were trading at 4.5 to 5. Meanwhile, Sunbelt product is still pricing at neutral or negative leverage. The math is simply better here.
Data as a Competitive Advantage
With thousands of units across 20 neighborhoods, Greenbrook has built something most operators don’t have: a live, proprietary dataset on Brooklyn renters.
Migration patterns. Where tenants are coming from. Which neighborhoods are absorbing demand from which other neighborhoods. Where rent growth is leading versus lagging. They’re sending renewal notices three months in advance and watching the negotiation play out in real time — that three-month window gives them information the public market doesn’t see until six months later.
It’s their own internal StreetEasy. And it informs every acquisition decision.
The Bottom Line
Greg Fournier built one of the most impressive portfolios in Brooklyn by doing things the hard way — bootstrapped, vertically integrated, deal by deal — in a product type that most institutional capital ignored.
The $486 million refinance isn’t the end of the story. It’s proof of concept. Brooklyn free-market multifamily, operated at a high level, is institutional.
The people who figured that out early are being rewarded for it. The rest of the market is starting to catch up.
Episode 63 of the New York City Multifamily Podcast is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
Enjoy the episode.
— Seth
