Chris Plaford has had many years of experience investing in a variety of areas such as equities, equity derivatives, healthcare, structured products, real estate, credit default swaps, convertible bonds, and straight bonds. In 2013, he returned to where it all began with real estate ventures through his company, Capital Asset Properties LLC.

This company focuses on the fact that access to capital is much more difficult in the middle of the market American real estate sector (projects valued between $1 million – $5 million). Chris Plaford is an expert at determining whether certain risks will outweigh returns. He knows through experience that there is more inefficiency in the middle-market real estate world than in either the commercial real estate market or the hedge fund universe because of a complete lack of competition.

Middle America needs a support system when it comes to funding.

Projects with equity requirements of $1 million – $5 million tend to be both out of reach of retail “mom and pop” investors who simply lack the capital, and below the radar of institutional real estate investors that won’t touch projects below $5 million because it doesn’t move the needle in their portfolio. Individuals residing on the East and West coast sometimes have access to alternative financing sources, but typically these networks don’t extend to the rest of the country. This inadequacy in availability means project sizes between $1 million – $5 million are typically insufficiently served, and hence inefficient. Chris Plaford’s company does transactions with a variety of partners, from developers to single-family and townhome projects. Their largest markets encompass North and South Carolina and Florida.

Chris Plaford attended Indiana University where he got his Bachelor of Science degree in finance. Even before college, while still in high school, he started getting involved in real estate. He bought a couple of multifamily apartment buildings despite having no cash by convincing the sellers to take a second mortgage. He recognized that he had a knack for finance and headed to Wall Street. After gaining experience working at Goldman Sachs and doing hedge fund work, Chris went to work for Balyasny Asset Management, a well-respected group in the hedge fund arena. He started out as a trader and worked his way up to Portfolio Manager. The group within the organization where he spent most of his time was the Healthcare division. This, in turn, eventually turned into Visium Asset Management, a venture which turned out to be highly prestigious in the Healthcare universe. Chris became a partner at that business, a group of funds with $8 billion of assets under management.

Some of the individual funds that Chris Plaford managed grew upwards of $500 million, with total AUM under his supervision exceeding $1 billion. He next served as the Chief Executive Officer of Claravant Analytics, a startup that consults the biotech and pharmaceutical industries about how to raise money.

Although Chris does not seek investment banking engagements, he is often asked to help advise companies because of his extensive knowledge. He formed his own consulting firm, CAP Consulting LLC, that he uses for his consulting projects.

Chris Plaford currently lives in Wilmington, NC. He is an avid fisherman and has been since childhood.