About
The firm an operator built to be on the right side of the capital.
Clark St Capital is a real estate firm run by an operator who's done the work, on both sides of the capital stack. We put investor capital to work in deals. We lend to vetted operators who run deals of their own. The structure you invest through decides whose interests get served. We built ours to serve yours.
The firm
We built it with our own money first. Then we opened the door.
Clark St Capital is the parent. It didn't start by raising other people's money. In 2011 Ed bought a small multifamily with his own capital. For almost eight years after that, he flipped houses and built a multifamily portfolio funded entirely by the profits those flips threw off. No syndications. No funds. Not a single outside dollar.
That stretch was the point. Eight years to build the systems, refine the model, and prove it worked before anyone else's capital was on the line. The first syndication came in 2019. By then the track record was already real. The lending fund is the most recent chapter, and it's the one doing the most work for investors today.
Here's how it fits together now. Investors put capital into the Capital Preservation Fund, managed by Clark St Funds. That capital is then lent to experienced, well-vetted Connecticut operators through Clark St Lending. Investors hold a first-position lien and get paid quarterly. The fund is open now.
We understand these projects because we execute the same business model ourselves. We flip single-family houses in Connecticut through Clark St Homes, the same value-add work the operators we fund do every day. When we underwrite a flip, we're reading numbers we've lived. That's the difference between a lender who scores a file and one who's walked the building.
Syndications are still here, as a longer-horizon strategy. Class B and C multifamily in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Western Massachusetts, held for years, paid quarterly. The lending fund is the near-term engine; the syndications are the patient compounding behind it.
- Founded
- 2011
- Deals reviewed
- 1,100+
- Peak rental units
- 196
- House flips
- 75+
Two lanes
Invest with us, or borrow from us.
Invest
For accredited investors who want quarterly income backed by a first-position lien on real Connecticut assets. You're the lender. The fund does the rest.
Borrow
For experienced Connecticut operators who've found a deal and need a funding partner who closes fast and funds draws faster. We've done your job. We fund it like operators, not a bank.
Founder
Ed Mathews
Operator first. Investor second. The order matters.
Ed spent his career helping companies build process and systems before going full-time into real estate. He held senior roles at four category-defining companies: Ariba, Coupa Software, Scanmarket, and DocuSign. He was an early-stage employee at Coupa, Scanmarket, and DocuSign, and both Coupa and DocuSign later went public. The work was building systems that scaled, managing risk, and holding teams accountable when there was no room to miss.
He started buying Connecticut real estate in 2011. For years he ran the portfolio alongside the tech career, underwriting deals from hotel rooms between flights. In February 2018 he left DocuSign and went all-in.
What he built was never the easy version. Every deal was a turnaround. No stabilized buys, no clean handoffs, no easy ones. He learned the business by fixing the things other people walked away from.
I analyzed deal after deal before I made my first offer. Froze every time. Then a broker named Amy Rio saw me freeze (again), jammed a pen into my hand and made me sign my first contract on the hood of my truck. That four-unit cost me $99K in 2011. I sold it for $410,000 in 2024. The lesson wasn't about the deal. It was about getting out of my own way.
Years in, Ed's honest about what real estate has been: fun, hard, lucrative, stressful, backbreaking, and now fun again. Markets shifted. Rates climbed. The crowd sat down. He kept working.
That work is why the firm lends today. Ed's been the operator on the other side of the loan, the one waiting on a draw with a crew standing around. So Clark St became the funding partner he wished he'd had: an operator on the lending side, a co-investor on the equity side, never a faceless check.
Ed hosts the Real Estate Underground podcast. He's a Villanova basketball fanatic living in the middle of UConn basketball country with his wife of 30 years, Patricia, their two daughters, and their three dogs.
Why we work this way
Three commitments, in writing.
01
First position, paid quarterly.
On the fund, investors are the lender. First-position lien, income paid every quarter, secured against real Connecticut property.
02
No promote, no spread skim.
The fund earns its yield from the interest and points borrowers pay, minus the fund’s actual operating costs. Nothing skimmed in between. Clark St is the lender on these projects and invests alongside on the same terms. That’s why the yield is a target, not a guarantee: the cost side is real and it moves.
03
Downside protection, built in.
We hold six months of interest in escrow on every loan. And when a project hits trouble, we work with the operator to fix it first, because a finished project pays everyone and a foreclosure pays no one.
The yield has an engine, and it's not leverage or hope. Clark St Lending deploys the fund's capital at 10% to 15% interest-only, plus 3 points. The rate is set in-house, based on the operator's background, experience, financial strength, and the risk of the specific project. An operator we're just getting to know pays the top of that band. An operator who's proven themselves over years gets the best deal. Before we fund a dollar, every loan has to clear a minimum 2% spread over our cost of capital. Every loan sits in first position on a real asset, with an interest reserve already set aside.
There's a quieter way to build wealth in this market, and it's a conservative one. Not by chasing the deal yourself, but by funding the well-vetted operators, renovators, and flippers who do, secured in first position in one of the most stable and consistent real estate markets in the country. The people who reliably built wealth in the gold rush weren't the prospectors. They were the ones who sold the picks and shovels. Clark St supplies the picks and shovels. The operators go find their fortune. The capital stays protected while they do.
On the equity side, our syndications, the alignment looks different but points the same direction. We co-invest in every deal on the same terms as our investors, document every fee, and pay investors back their capital and a preferred return before any promote flows to us. When we syndicate a project, we underwrite to a minimum 2% spread between our cost of debt and the going-in cap rate. That waterfall belongs to the syndications. The fund has no promote at all.
We work this way because it's the only way we'd want to be treated.
Work with us
Pick your lane.
Three ways in. One, invest in the fund and earn quarterly income backed by a first-position lien. Two, bring us your next deal and get an operator-lender who funds fast. Three, wait for one of our next syndications. We usually find three or four a year, and the monthly letter is how you'll hear when one opens. Not sure which fits? Start with the lane closest to your goals.
Or get the monthly letter from Ed first: what we're funding, what we're passing on, and how we're thinking about the real estate market.
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