Spotlight: Robert A. Stanger & Company, Valuing Non-Traded REITs and BDCs Since 1978

The Shrewsbury, N.J., investment bank values more than 27,000 untraded alternative securities for account statements, and its research has tracked the non-traded BDC redemption cycle through 2026.

October 14, 2026

Robert A. Stanger & Company, Inc. is a Shrewsbury, New Jersey, investment bank focused on real estate and non-traded alternative investments. Its work runs along three lines: independent valuation of securities that have no trading market, transaction and product advisory for sponsors and REITs, and a set of publications tracking fundraising and redemptions across non-traded REITs, BDCs, interval funds and private placements.

The valuation business supplies values for untraded securities that appear on client account statements. According to the firm, it maintains a database of more than 27,000 alternative investment securities and has provided valuation data collection and reporting for more than 25 years to wirehouses and clearing firms, regional broker-dealers, and bank and trust companies, which use the values to meet FINRA and ERISA reporting requirements. Stanger delivers values monthly, quarterly or annually through an automated electronic feed that maps each security to the client's own internal identifier, and subscribers can also collect unrelated business taxable income (UBTI) data through the service. Executive Managing Director Randy D. Sweetman leads the Data Collection and Valuation Group.

Origins and Leadership

Robert A. Stanger founded the firm in 1978 after more than 17 years on Wall Street, where, according to the firm, he was among the first to recognize the investor appeal of direct participation programs. He advised Congress and federal and state regulators and was a founder of the Investment Program Association, now the Institute for Portfolio Alternatives. He died in 2005, and the firm's logo still carries his handwritten initials.

Kevin T. Gannon, Chairman and CEO, joined Stanger in 1983 from Deloitte Haskins & Sells. The firm says he has been lead or co-lead banker on more than $100 billion of assignments involving real estate assets and securities. A CPA, Gannon has appeared as a valuation expert in U.S. Tax Court, U.S. Bankruptcy Court and Delaware Chancery Court. President Michael K. O'Neil, who joined in 2007, leads the direct participation program and partnership valuation team.

Investment Banking, Fairness Opinions and Product Structuring

Stanger's advisory work centers on consolidations and exits: REIT IPO formation transactions, tenant-in-common rollups, private entity consolidations, mergers into public entities and sales to institutional buyers, along with the fairness opinions and real estate appraisals those deals require. Its product distribution consulting practice works with sponsors and institutions designing REITs, BDCs, interval funds, DSTs and private placements for the wealth channel.

Publications on Non-Traded REITs, BDCs and Fundraising

• The Stanger Report: non-traded REIT and BDC market statistics, total return indices and fee structure comparisons
• The Stanger Market Pulse: monthly fundraising data with sponsor league tables
• The Stanger Chairman's Report: NAV REIT and non-traded BDC sales and redemptions
• The Stanger Closed-End Fund Report: interval funds and tender offer funds
• Stanger Privates: a quarterly on private placement REITs and BDCs, available only to Institutional Access subscribers
• The Stanger Alt Street Journal: a free weekly industry update

The August 2026 issue of The Stanger Market Pulse, released Sept. 23, put alternative investment fundraising at $119.0 billion through August, down 13% from the same period of 2025. Credit strategies fell 47% to $38.7 billion, while real estate and infrastructure, which Stanger groups as HALO strategies (hard assets with low obsolescence), rose 37% to $38.9 billion and moved ahead of credit for the year. Private placements accounted for 51% of the total, up from 40% a year earlier.

The Stanger Liquidity Cycle

In a March 4, 2026 analysis, Stanger laid out a sequence it calls the Stanger Liquidity Cycle: fundraising slows first, redemption requests rise over the following quarters, and sponsors then have to manage liquidity actively. The paper argued that non-listed BDCs, whose capital formation grew from $3.5 billion in 2020 to $63.1 billion in 2025 by Stanger's count, were entering the early stage of the cycle non-listed REITs went through beginning in 2022. Stanger has tracked tender offer results fund by fund since. Its Oct. 2 update, covering 19 NAV BDCs, reported third-quarter redemption requests of $13.8 billion, or 11.5% of estimated tender offer NAV, down from 12.7% on a same-store basis in the second quarter, and Gannon said the figures suggested demand may have peaked in Q2.

Federal Preemption

In October 2022, Stanger published an editorial by Special Adviser Mark Goldberg and John Palmer contending that non-listed REITs and BDCs, already registered with the SEC, should be exempt from state-by-state registration review, as mutual funds and listed securities have been since the National Securities Markets Improvement Act of 1996. When the SEC proposed that preemption in May 2026, Gannon described the change as long overdue, and on July 23, 2026 he submitted a comment letter on the proposal.