Sugar Maple Asset Management

Michael Fascitelli, the firm's founder, serves as CEO and makes all final investment decisions. He draws on over 30 years of institutional real estate experience, including 16 years as president of Vornado Realty Trust and a prior career as a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he co-headed the real estate investment banking group.

Deal flow originates almost entirely through Fascitelli's personal network of developers, brokers, lenders, and institutional counterparties cultivated across his decades in New York commercial real estate. The firm does not participate in broad auction processes, focusing instead on off-market opportunities where speed, certainty, and structural creativity provide an edge.

Sugar Maple operates as a direct-investment firm that manages the founder's personal capital and co-invests alongside a curated group of family offices and institutions on a deal-by-deal basis. It does not raise blind-pool commingled funds, which allows it to avoid deployment pressure and pursue transactions with unconventional time horizons.

The firm exclusively pursues direct transactions — making equity investments, providing credit, and structuring special-situation capital directly into assets and operating companies. It does not allocate to external real estate funds or fund-of-funds programs.

The firm concentrates on major US gateway markets, with primary focus on the New York metropolitan area, South Florida, and Los Angeles. Fascitelli's deep operational history in New York makes the tri-state area the firm's most active region.

Sugar Maple provides direct equity for property acquisitions and recapitalizations, mezzanine debt and preferred equity for sponsor-led transactions, and structured rescue capital for distressed or complex situations. Transaction sizes are institutional, typically ranging from $25 million to $150 million in total capitalization including co-investor participation (per public record).

Sugar Maple is an independent firm founded by Vornado's former president, Michael Fascitelli, after his departure from Vornado in 2013. There is no ongoing formal affiliation, operational overlap, or capital relationship between the two entities, though transactions occasionally involve counterparties from Fascitelli's Vornado-era relationships.