Investment Matters: CRE Finance Maven

February 20, 2026

CREFC President & CEO Lisa Pendergast takes the pulse of the real estate capital markets in this conversation with CPE's Paul Rosta.

Lisa Pendergast leads one of the industry’s most influential organizations and is a top capital markets analyst to boot, but she discovered her passion almost by accident. An English major with her eye on law school, she was hired as a writer by a powerful institutional investor. The opportunity to learn the finance business from brilliant minds proved to be, as she puts it, “the cheapest MBA anybody ever got.”

Today, Pendergast serves as president & CEO of Commercial Real Estate Finance Council. Before taking on her current role, she was a member of the organization’s Board of Governors and served as its 2010-2011 president. She’s held senior positions at Jeffries LLC, an affiliate of Leucadia National Corporation, as well as the Royal Bank of Scotland.

In this conversation, she shares takeaways from the organization’s recent national conference in Miami, describing the event’s upbeat mood. She reveals insights from CREFC’s latest national sentiment survey, and discusses why this bellwether indicator is approaching its record high.

Also during this podcast, Pendergast discusses today’s key policy issues and how CREFC is informing regulators about the issues that hamper the industry. As one of the top securitization experts in the business, she gives us her take on the state of CMBS and CLOs.

Episode highlights: