Source: Green Street News
Author: Su-Lin Tan
Date: 07 May 2025
Zagga will raise money through a new fund in Singapore to provide capital for lending
Sydney-based private credit firm Zagga has launched a new Singapore fund to tap into the growing Asian capital appetite for private lending on Australia commercial real estate, Green Street News can reveal.
The fund, Zagga Real Estate Credit Fund, will target Asian family offices, ultra-high-net-worth and high-net-worth individuals, and institutional capital.
It takes the form of a variable capital company, a new legal entity for investment funds in Singapore and popular with external fund managers looking to raise capital in Singapore and Asia.
The open-end fund is initially targeting SG$20m ($24m) by the end of September. Funds raised will be used to financing commercial real estate projects primarily on Australia’s east coast.
The firm has also appointed Roushana Sjahsam, a former managing director with Cantor Fitzgerald’s capital markets team in Hong Kong, as its senior board advisor for Southeast Asia to promote Zagga’s real estate private credit offers to institutional investors, family offices, and wealth managers.
Asia-based investors are “attracted by Australia’s strong economic fundamentals, growth tailwinds in the property sector and the uncorrelated diversification benefits private credit can offer,” she added.
Zagga has invested over $2.5bn across more than 300 commercial real estate transactions in Australia and returned $1.5bn in 150 loan exits. It currently has over $1bn in active loans.
Some of the projects it has funded include Sydney’s luxury developer RnB’s residential development in Sydney’s eastern suburbs as well as commercial and industrial property.
Capital from ASEAN countries in particular accounts for about 15% of Zagga’s funds under management and is expected to double over the next two years as demand for real estate private lending in Australia continues to grow.
The lending gap in Australia real estate due to the retreat in bank lending has attracted many new lending entrants in the past five years, growing the sector to about $40bn, according to ASIC.
In Singapore, Zagga has BigFundr as an investor and in Japan, Crowd Bank. Other institutional funders outside of Australia include those from Switzerland and the US.
