CRE Analyst at UC Funds

UC Funds is a vertically integrated commercial real estate specialty finance firm, founded in 2010 by Daniel M. Palmier and headquartered in Boston, with offices in New York and Miami Beach. The firm makes non-recourse bridge loans, mezzanine debt, preferred equity and structured debt against multifamily, hospitality, mixed-use, adaptive reuse, senior living and retail assets across the United States.

Two things make UC Funds unusual. First, it is vertically integrated: it originates, underwrites and services its own loans in-house rather than farming any of it out, and it looks at credit through the real estate rather than the borrower. Second, it does not only lend — it owns and self-manages ONE CLUB Gulf Shores, a 490-unit resort-style community on the Alabama Gulf Coast. So the same team sits on both sides of the capital stack.

The company's own three-word description of how it works is "Fast. Flexible. Reliable." The senior team has worked together for over a decade.

About the role

UC Funds is building its first remote analytical seat, and this is it. The firm screens, underwrites and packages bridge deals continuously, and sells participations in them to co-lender partners. Today that execution work competes for the attention of senior people whose time belongs on origination and credit decisions. You take the execution layer — model it, screen it, package it — so they review and decide rather than build.

That means the work runs in two directions at once. Outward: putting together a package persuasive enough that a co-lending partner takes a piece of the deal. Inward: making sure UC Funds is properly protected on the position it keeps. You will be doing both on the same deal, often in the same week.

This is not a support seat. You own the analysis end to end, there is no analyst layer above you to catch mistakes, and your work goes to an audience outside the firm. It is also a deliberate experiment: if this works, UC Funds expands its remote analytical team, and you will have been the reason.

What you'll do

Screening & underwriting

• Underwrite income-producing real estate from the primary documents — rent rolls, operating statements and T-12s, capex budgets, leases — and find what is missing or overstated in them.

• Build the financial model from a blank sheet: cash flow projections, debt sizing, IRR and NPV, sensitivity and downside cases.

• Work the deal from the lender's side — loan sizing, DSCR, debt yield, LTV/LTC, interest reserves, recourse and structure, bridge versus permanent.

• Return a first view on inbound deals quickly enough to keep pace with a bridge lender's timeline.

Packaging & participations

• Produce credit memos, investment summaries and participation packages that a co-lender reads and acts on.

• Present the deal favourably and accurately at the same time, making UC Funds' retained risk clear rather than buried.

• Support refinancings, dispositions and other transaction workstreams as they come up.

Analysis & recommendation

• Finish the work with a recommendation and the reasoning behind it — including when the recommendation is to pass.

• Carry several live deals at once without losing the detail on any of them.

• Keep a busy senior sponsor informed in writing, on your own initiative, without being chased.

Process & tools

• Turn what you do repeatedly into standard models, templates and reusable packages, so the next deal is faster than the last.

• Bring AI and automation into the workflow where it genuinely speeds things up — the firm is actively pursuing this.

What success looks like (first 90 days)

• You screen inbound deals independently and return a first view that the senior team does not have to redo.

• You build UC Funds' standard underwriting model on a new deal from scratch, in the firm's conventions, without being walked through them again.

• At least one participation or offering package you wrote has gone to an external co-lender essentially as written.

• Your reporting rhythm works asynchronously — nobody has to ask you for status.

By twelve months, you are the default first pass on everything entering the pipeline, you are trusted to state a recommendation including a negative one, and you have made at least one part of the underwriting or packaging workflow measurably faster.

You are likely a fit if you

• Have owned the analysis on live transactions yourself, rather than supporting someone who did.

• Are comfortable with incomplete inputs and a house method that is not written down anywhere.

• Would rather say what you think the answer is than hand over a spreadsheet and wait.

• Work well when direction arrives in bursts and the rest is yours to sequence.

• Want to build something — this role exists to prove a model, not to fill a seat.

Required qualifications

• From-scratch financial modelling in Excel. You can build a CRE model on a blank sheet — cash flows, debt sizing, IRR/NPV, sensitivities — and explain why every assumption is what it is. Equity-side acquisitions and capital-planning FP&A backgrounds count here; pure reporting, bookkeeping or dashboard work does not.

• Underwriting from primary deal documents. Rent rolls, operating statements, T-12s, capex budgets and leases have been your daily input, and you have used them to form a view rather than only to report. Property accounting and asset management experience counts if you used the documents to reach conclusions.

• Lender-side analysis. You understand loan sizing, DSCR, debt yield, LTV/LTC, interest reserves and structure, and you can point to a deal where you sized or structured the debt yourself. Strong equity-side candidates who personally ran the debt workstream are very welcome; residential mortgage processing is a different discipline and does not apply here.

• Third-party-ready written output. You have written credit memos, IC materials, offering memoranda or comparable documents that left your company and were acted on by someone outside it.

• US commercial real estate fluency. You work comfortably with US lease structures, US operating statement formats and US market data sources. Canadian CRE experience transfers; experience only in other markets needs evidence you have since worked to US conventions.

• Genuine remote autonomy. You have run your own working rhythm without daily supervision and can describe how you kept people informed.

• English at professional working proficiency, spoken and written — clear enough to write a memo a US co-lender relies on and to hold a live call with a senior US executive.

Preferred

• Multifamily depth, including how unit-level operations drive the numbers. Hospitality, senior living and student housing transfer well.

• A track record of carrying several live deals at once on transaction timelines.

• Examples of a recommendation of yours changing a decision — particularly one that went against the room.

• Working use of AI and automation tooling in analytical work, and an instinct for standardising what you do twice.

Tools

Microsoft Excel is the core analytical environment, alongside Word and PowerPoint. Any additional platforms in use will be covered at the interview stage.

Working hours

Full-time, remote, with core coverage 9AM–5PM US Eastern. Latin America is preferred for time-zone overlap.

What we offer

• A full-time remote role. We do not consider candidates planning to combine several jobs.

• Direct work with the number two executive of a principal lender, across live deals from screening through participation sale, rather than one narrow slice of the process.

• Stability — this is not an internship or project work. We consider only candidates looking for a long-term commitment of 18 months or more.

• Salary will be discussed at the interview. Paid in USD.

• A quick selection process.

Hiring process

1. Fill in the application form and attach your CV.

2. Zoom interview with a Hire5 recruiter.

3. Interview with the hiring manager at UC Funds.

4. Practical case study (final stage only). You may also be asked to share a real model you have built previously.

5. Get hired.