Within DLP Capital’s platform, lending has grown to play a critical role in how capital is deployed across real estate projects to bring Thriving Communities to life. While investors are most familiar with DLP’s lending platform through vehicles like the DLP Lending Fund or DLP Preferred Credit Fund, the broader story is really about the lending operation itself—the system through which capital is deployed across projects and sponsors throughout the country, with a particular focus on the Sunbelt region.
For DLP Capital, it’s important to distinguish between the lending operation and the private sponsored real estate funds themselves. The Funds serve as capital sources, investor capital that can then be deployed into loans originated by the lending operation. Those loans can take several forms depending on where they sit within the project’s capital stack.
Most often, lending capital is deployed alongside external sponsors. In these situations, DLP provides financing to vetted sponsor operators, such as Thompson Realty or The Falcone Group, while the sponsor manages the day-to-day operations.
In most cases, senior debt is provided, similar to a traditional mortgage; however, DLP Capital can also provide mezzanine financing or preferred equity (characterized as debt for tax purposes), which typically sits above senior debt in the capital stack but below the sponsor’s common equity. If a capital stack is visualized as a pyramid, senior debt forms the base, mezzanine and preferred equity sit above it, and common equity—often the sponsor’s own capital—sits at the top.
Following the path of Don’s strategy
Lending’s evolution at DLP has consistently mirrored the progression of Founder and CEO Don Wenner’s real estate strategy. Early in his career as a real estate agent, Don’s focus was on fix-and-flip projects: purchasing homes that weren’t selling, renovating them, and selling once improved. Over time, that effort scaled into renovating multiple homes simultaneously and building a portfolio of rental properties.
From there, the strategy continued to scale. Rather than renovating individual homes one at a time, Don began to acquire apartment communities, recognizing that the opportunity to renovate multiple units with a single investment could meaningfully multiply DLP’s impact.
The lending platform emerged as the next logical extension. Once the model had proven successful internally, the firm in turn began financing others’ pursuits. By leveraging his team’s strength as an owner and lending to others, Don was able to magnify his impact and accelerate his goal of building Thriving Communities.
In many ways, lending has consistently followed DLP’s growth strategy—helping entrepreneurs and sponsors operate in the spaces DLP had previously occupied as the strategy scaled.
From single-family projects to community lending
In its early years, lending primarily financed smaller single-family projects. Mirroring Don’s early years, many of the loans over the first five or six years of the platform’s history supported investors purchasing individual homes, renovating them, and either selling the properties or converting them into rental housing.
Over time, the strategy scaled—just as DLP’s own investment approach has.
Around 2020, DLP’s lending began transitioning toward what the firm calls community lending. Rather than financing individual homes, the platform increasingly began supporting apartment communities and larger multifamily projects.
At that point, DLP’s Managing Director of Lending, Nick Lanni, moved from acquisitions to the lending platform, where he helped build and scale the operation as it expanded into multifamily. Early deals focused on acquiring existing apartment communities and renovating units to create value, marking a clear shift in both strategy and scale.
As DLP’s strategy progressed toward the construction and development of Thriving Communities, lending continued to follow suit, expanding into development and construction financing. This shift represented a significant increase in the scale of lending activity. As the platform began financing larger multifamily projects, annual originations quickly grew from roughly $200 million per year to nearly $800 million.
Building the infrastructure to scale
As lending volumes increased, the internal process for evaluating and executing deals became more institutional.
When DLP’s President of Lending, Dean Kirkham, joined the team in March 2025, the lending process was refined to support consistency and streamline execution, with relationship managers taking greater ownership of deal analytics and risk assessment.
Standardized tools and templates were introduced to ensure every deal was evaluated through a consistent framework, improving both discipline and efficiency. This created a more formalized and institutional approach to evaluating transactions and reduced the need for repeated reviews. An important step toward scaling our lending capabilities as DLP continues to pursue larger and more complex opportunities.
This standardization has helped DLP develop a reputation as an established team capable of maintaining a disciplined approach to risk while still delivering creative solutions aligned with sponsor needs. As a result, the platform continues to see increasing repeat business, with sponsors returning for a consistent, thoughtful approach to structuring deals. Going deeper with extraordinary sponsors improves both efficiency and risk management. As those relationships are fostered, repeat partnerships have become a key driver of deal flow, supporting a steady pipeline of opportunities.
2025: A breakout year
Momentum has been building for years as DLP approached an important milestone: $1 billion in annual originations.
In 2025, the combination of improved internal processes, repeat sponsor relationships, and larger originations pushed the team across the necessary threshold to deliver one of the strongest years in DLP’s lending history.
What began as a lending platform focused primarily on single-family projects has evolved into a large-scale operation that finances and builds Thriving Communities across the country. As DLP continues progress toward its long-term vision, the lending platform plays a central role in building on that foundation—supporting other sponsors’ pursuit of opportunities that have defined each stage of DLP’s growth.