Ares Commercial Real Estate

Ares’ platform provides credibility, sourcing, and co‑investment partners. The team increased secured facility capacity by 300 million dollars in Q1 2026, redeemed a CLO to reduce funding cost, and kept leverage moderate while resolving problematic assets.

That said, external management reduces alignment relative to founder‑led or owner‑operated models and embeds fee drag. Execution on the remaining small set of challenged loans will be the key near‑term test.