A founder of Cresset Real Estate Partners, Jeff currently serves as a Managing Director, leading the real estate team in creating and managing the over $3 Billion development portfolio. Jeff brings more than 35 years of experience in all aspects of commercial real estate to Cresset, including acquisition, development, finance, management and ownership.
Jeff, along with Michael Miller, acquired Baird & Warner Real Estate Capital in 1997, leading a management buyout of one of the nation’s leading commercial mortgage banking firms. After tripling the size of the company’s mortgage servicing portfolio and seeing a dramatic increase in commercial loan production, the team sold the company at a significant gain to a national real estate platform.
In 2003, Miller and Cherner joined with Larry Levy to form Diversified Real Estate Capital. Diversified provides a full range of real estate services to a group of ultra-high net worth family office investors. From 2003-2020, Diversified invested over $1.5 Billion to acquire, develop or own 25 institutional quality assets, executing on a variety of value-add, opportunistic and development strategies to create significant alpha for investors. Diversified’s assets include Salesforce Tower, 321 N. Clark Street, the residential development of the Cassidy Tire site in Chicago, as well as The Victor Apartments in Dallas.