There is a stretch of the real estate market that almost nobody serves well. At the top, the big institutional funds concentrate their muscle on deals of hundreds of millions. At the bottom, the individual investor reaches, at most, a flat or a retail unit. In between lies a band —projects of €20–40M— too big for one investor and too small for the giants. That is where the club deal makes sense.
A club deal is, in essence, a small group of investors who come together to take on a specific deal under common management. It is not a blind fund where you contribute capital without knowing where it will go: each investor knows the asset, the structure and the assumptions before committing. You invest in something, not in a promise that something will eventually be found.
What it offers and what it demands
The format offers advantages that are hard to obtain investing alone:
- Access. Deals and locations reserved for players with the capacity to originate and structure, outside the open market.
- Diversification. The investor can spread their capital across several club deals instead of concentrating it in a single asset.
- Control and transparency. Knowing the asset from the start, each participant decides deal by deal, with complete information.
In exchange, it demands something not every format requires: a manager who does their job well in the three critical phases —originating the deal, structuring it and operating it— and who answers to the group throughout the life of the investment.
The difference between a good club deal and a simple mailing list of opportunities is who manages, how it is structured and whether the manager risks their own capital.
The syndicate is not the product: the management is
Gathering investors is the easy part. The hard part —and what determines the outcome— is the quality of the selected deal, the solidity of the legal and financial structure, and the execution over the years the project lasts. A badly managed club deal is not a shared opportunity: it is a shared risk.
That is why we structure every vehicle as what it is —a specific deal, with its analysis, its memorandum and its responsible team— and co-invest in it alongside the rest of the group. Vehicles like Vik Living are born precisely from that logic: giving institutional access with a private ticket, with the manager inside.