Any layman with a peripheral understanding of the real estate market can tell you that there’s money to be lent and there are properties to buy. Somewhere. Banks, and in some instances special servicers, have them both in spades, which is currently of little help to investors gnawing at their leashes, ready to make some deals and turn a profit. In the midst of this stall, Wall Street’s high-risk/high-reward investment tools, see an opening to grab some loot.

“Hedge funds are the asset-backed lenders of yester-year,” Mission Capital Advisors’ David Tobin remarks. “There used to be far more middle-market real estate lenders to get these transactions. There really aren’t anymore, and hedge funds have helped supplant them in that role.”

Hedge funds didn’t just stop dealing with real estate. They were simply minding their own garden. Tobin points out that hedge funds, and private-equity funds for that matter, were very active at the start of the credit crunch, roughly early 2007, until Lehman Brothers’ collapse in September 2008. Like everyone else in the market, hedge funds got spooked by Lehman’s sudden implosion. More to the point, they were hit swiftly, directly and monetarily by the investment bank’s collapse. The collapse was the fourth largest in the world; at the time of its demise Lehman held $639 billion of assets and boasted $613 billion in bank debt and $155 billion in bond debt.