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Grounded Wealth
Grounded Wealth runs concentrated real asset portfolios for New York family offices, bypassing the 60/40 model since 2013.
Grounded Wealth
Grounded Wealth was launched in 2013 by Michael Ryan, who brought institutional real asset experience to a selective multi-family office model. Rather than scaling assets under management through fund launches, the firm grew by adding a limited number of wealthy families, each seeking direct exposure to tangible, income-producing assets. The founding premise was that family capital with long-duration horizons should own real property and contractual cash flows outright, avoiding the fee layering and liquidity mismatches of conventional fund structures. The investment strategy concentrates on three asset classes executed primarily through direct ownership and private credit instruments. Real estate positions target income-producing commercial and multifamily assets in secondary and tertiary US markets, where cap-rate spreads remain wider than in coastal gateway cities. Private credit allocations take the form of senior secured loans against hard assets, including construction-to-permanent financing and bridge lending for value-add property repositioning. The energy transition sleeve invests in operating renewable infrastructure — solar farms, battery storage facilities, and related power-purchase-agreement portfolios — favoring contracted cash flows over development-stage technology risk. Co-investors on these deals have included regional operators and single-family offices in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Ryan operates with a lean internal team from a New York base, relying on a network of property managers, operating partners, and legal counsel to service the underlying assets. The firm does not publicly disclose its aggregate deployment or number of client families. In March 2024, Grounded Wealth completed a structured preferred equity placement backing a Midwest solar-plus-storage portfolio developed by an independent power producer, expanding its energy transition footprint beyond the original Northeast concentration (public record). Grounded Wealth functions without a registered fund complex — every investment lives in separately managed accounts or single-purpose vehicles tailored to each family's tax and estate profile. This architecture treats each family balance sheet as its own permanent-capital vehicle, avoiding the forced-exit timelines and redemption pressures of pooled funds. It is a design choice that caps growth but aligns the firm's investment tempo with the actual holding period of the assets it buys.
General information
Firm type
Multi Family Office
Year founded
2013
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
New York
Corporate office
New York, NY, United States
Principals
Michael Ryan
Founder & Chief Investment Officer
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at Grounded Wealth?
Michael Ryan, the firm's founder, serves as Chief Investment Officer and makes all portfolio allocation and deal-level decisions. He built the firm in 2013 after an institutional real asset career and operates without a traditional investment committee layer. Day-to-day asset management is delegated to specialist operating partners, but origination and structural terms remain centralized with Ryan.
Does Grounded Wealth operate as a single family office or a multi-family office?
Grounded Wealth is structured as a multi-family office serving a small number of wealthy families, all of whom invest through separately managed accounts or single-purpose vehicles rather than commingled funds. The firm deliberately caps its client count to maintain portfolio concentration and tax-customization. Each family's capital is run on a dedicated basis, reflecting the permanent-capital discipline of a single-family office but applied across multiple balance sheets.
How does Grounded Wealth source its direct real estate and energy deals?
Deal flow comes through Ryan's long-standing relationships with regional property operators, developers, and independent power producers, primarily in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast. The firm does not participate in broad auction processes. Sourcing relies on bilateral negotiations and operator-led opportunities where Grounded Wealth can provide structured capital — often preferred equity or senior credit — that a conventional fund would find too small or too bespoke.
Does Grounded Wealth participate in fund commitments or only direct deals?
The firm invests almost exclusively through direct deals and privately negotiated credit instruments. It does not market itself as a fund-of-funds allocator. Occasionally, Grounded Wealth may partner with a specialized operating company through a joint-venture vehicle, but those structures are created deal-by-deal and do not resemble blind-pool fund commitments.
What investment stages or asset types does Grounded Wealth avoid?
The firm explicitly avoids venture capital, growth equity, public securities, and development-stage technology exposure. Even within its energy transition focus, Grounded Wealth targets operating assets with contracted revenue rather than pre-revenue or demonstration-phase projects. Pure financial leverage plays and distressed trading strategies are also outside the mandate.
How does Grounded Wealth handle the tax and estate-planning needs of its client families?
Tax-awareness is embedded in the investment structure rather than treated as a post-hoc overlay. Because each family's capital sits in dedicated accounts or vehicles, asset placement, depreciation capture, and exit timing can be tailored to the individual family's estate plan and intergenerational transfer strategy. Grounded Wealth coordinates with each family's existing tax and legal counsel but does not provide in-house estate-planning services.
What is Grounded Wealth's posture on co-investment alongside external institutional investors?
Grounded Wealth frequently co-invests alongside other single-family offices and regional operating partners, particularly in real estate and energy transactions where the combined capital stack benefits from multiple like-minded, long-duration participants. The firm has also accepted institutional co-investment from insurance-company separate accounts on a deal-by-deal basis when the asset scale warranted it, but such arrangements remain opportunistic rather than programmatic.
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