Narrative Financial Group

Narrative Financial Group

John P. Chigounis established Narrative Financial Group in 2013, bringing structured finance and trading experience from prior roles at firms including Jefferies and Cantor Fitzgerald. The firm was built to address the financing gap left by regional and community banks retreating from small-balance commercial real estate lending after the 2008 financial crisis. Chigounis positioned Narrative as a direct origination shop, not a broker or a fund-of-funds, giving it control over underwriting, structuring, and servicing from day one. The firm originates, underwrites, and services short-term bridge loans secured by transitional commercial real estate. Core asset classes include multifamily, mixed-use, retail, industrial, and office properties, typically with loan sizes between $1 million and $20 million. Geographic concentration spans the Southeast, Southwest, and Mountain West, with active origination in Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, and Arizona. Narrative's capital base includes institutional credit facilities and a series of private investment funds — the firm raised Narrative Opportunity Fund I and subsequently Narrative Opportunity Fund II, the latter targeting $300 million in commitments. By mid-2022, total originations since inception crossed the $2 billion threshold (per the firm's public disclosures, 2022). The firm acts as a direct portfolio lender, not a securitization-dependent shop, holding most loans on its balance sheet or within its managed vehicles and servicing them through its own platform. As of late 2023, the firm operated from its Los Angeles headquarters, employing a team of investment, underwriting, and asset management professionals. Narrative has not publicly disclosed total headcount or assets under management, but the scale of cumulative originations and its multi-fund structure suggest an operation materially larger than a boutique advisory. There are no public disclosures of adjacent vehicles such as a philanthropic foundation, real-asset operating company, or membership in peer networks like Tiger 21 or YPO. In September 2023, the firm's leadership was actively deploying capital from Narrative Opportunity Fund II into bridge loans across its established Sunbelt footprint, maintaining its pace through a market cycle where many competing non-bank lenders pulled back. The firm's structural differentiator is its status as an owner-operator lender in a space dominated by brokers and intermediaries. Narrative originates directly through its own sourcing network, underwrites in-house, and services the full life of each loan — a vertically integrated model that creates a feedback loop between credit performance and future underwriting. This is not a platform aggregating third-party loans; it is a credit shop with its own pipeline, its own servicing team, and a fund series that aligns Chigounis's capital with that of his limited partners.