Senior Director of Investments

Benchmark Senior Living (“Benchmark”) was founded in 1997 by Tom Grape, CEO, and is the largest provider of senior housing in New England. The Company, with its corporate offices located in Waltham, MA, offers a high level of services and care with the warmth and hospitality of home. Benchmark is a leading service provider in several key areas including independent living, assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing, and short stay programs. With a choice of lifestyles and differing levels of care, the company can tailor its products and services and/or living arrangements to suit the needs of each resident.

The Director of Investments will be a member of the Investments department and reports to the Vice President of Investments.  This role will be highly visible since the Vice President of Investments reports directly to the CFO. The Investments team leads the sourcing and underwriting of new acquisition opportunities, the capitalization of all Benchmark acquisitions and developments, and recapitalizations and refinancing of existing portfolios. Benchmark has an in-house Development Department with whom Investments works very closely. While at its core, Benchmark is an operating company (it operates seniors housing communities), this role and department are very much real estate focused. Benchmark is committed to a New England to Washington D.C. footprint and continues to grow its portfolio through acquisitions and new developments. Benchmark has a robust and active pipeline of deal flow to undertake.

This role will have direct exposure to debt and equity partners, Benchmark’s Investment Committee, Executive team, and opportunities to drive portfolio growth. This role will also interface with several departments within the organization as part of formulating deal projections and strategies.

Principal Duties/Responsibilities:

With oversight from and in collaboration with the VP if Investments:

• Deal intake and screening

• Participate in broker calls

• Perform intake screening of deals and preview to Investments Team members

• Lead preparation of deal pitch materials for prospective capital partners and investment committee packages

• Underwrite deals

• Excel-based modeling

• Engages in market research and relevant data tracking to support deal business decisions and inform deal assumptions

• Ensures key members of operations and other stakeholders are appropriately involved in underwriting creation and approval

• Analysis to support key underwriting assumption inputs (ex: real estate tax analysis, rent comps, wage comps, etc.)

• Monitors relevant industry data and performance

• Participate in deal term sheet and document negotiation (JV partners, developer groups, lenders, legal teams)

• Exposure to co-invest GP fundraising process

• In addition to operating the communities, the majority of the communities are owned in JVs with institutional LP partners and GP co-invest funds affiliated with the Benchmark Management Team

• Direct with deal transaction work (due diligence process, transaction execution)

• Oversee and train one or more to-be-hired positions reporting into this role

• Growth opportunities and goals with mentorship from VP of Investments include:

• Full deal process exposure (from deal identification, to underwriting, to deal term negotiation) yields the opportunity to grow into the point-person to lead and originate deals

• Highly visible role with the opportunity to directly build relationships with Benchmark Executives and key capital and lender partners

• Opportunity to coach and mentor one or more Investment Associate(s) to (1) build managerial skills and (2) delegate to allow for time to gain experience on increasingly complex deal structures

Education/Experience/Licensure/Certification:

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant coursework (Finance, Economics, Business, etc.)

• 6+ years relevant work experience

Required Skills/Abilities

• Highly proficient in Excel, business writing and preparation of presentation decks

• Advanced financial modeling skills (Excel based)

• Ability to quickly screen new deals and do ad hoc analysis at varying levels of detail depending on data available and time constraints

• Ability to manage multiple projects and workflows at once

• Close attention to accuracy

• Strong organizational skills

• Strong relationship-building skills (1) externally with investor and lender partners and (2) internally across various departments to obtain information and buy-in on financial modeling (ex: interacting with VP of Care on proper staffing levels to underwrite)

Job Requirements: