About Altus Equity Group
Altus Equity Group is a mid-market real estate private equity firm with big ambitions for its future. We are building an enduring alternative investment platform, not simply chasing the next deal. Our investment culture is disciplined, entrepreneurial, long-term oriented, and rooted in intellectual honesty, investor trust, alignment, and ownership thinking. All while being aggressive in chasing opportunity. The Acquisitions Manager will help determine which opportunities deserve Altus’s time, capital, reputation, and investor trust.
About the Role
The Acquisitions Manager owns the operating rhythm and output of Altus’s acquisitions function: sourcing, screening, underwriting, negotiating, and advancing opportunities from first look through signed purchase agreement and executable debt term sheet. This is a leadership role for someone who can combine relationship-driven sourcing with rigorous underwriting, clear communication, and disciplined judgment, while being responsible for the broader acquisitions function.
This is a newly created seat with immediate responsibility. A senior investment team member is moving into a production-oriented role focused on sourcing, investor interaction, and mentoring rather than day-to-day department leadership. You will step into that operating leadership, with direct access to the CEO and senior leadership, and with a clear path to additional leadership as Altus grows. The right candidate leads with confidence, learns with humility, possesses an entrepreneurial mindset, and builds a repeatable process that produces disciplined, actionable opportunities. There are no constraints as to where this role could lead.
What You’ll Do
Source and secure opportunities
· Identify and cultivate investment opportunities that fit Altus’s strategy, return requirements, risk tolerance, and reputation standards.
· Build and maintain productive relationships with brokers, owners, operators, lenders, partners, developers, and other market participants, treating people consistently with Altus’s core values.
· Maintain an active, prioritized pipeline and drive opportunities from identification through internal approval, offer, negotiation, PSA execution, and debt term sheet.
· Create and maintain a consistent sourcing cadence, follow-up discipline, and pipeline reporting system.
· Collaborate and negotiate with brokers, sellers, and even lenders to secure opportunities with outsized risk adjusted returns. Creativity, understanding of risk, and a deep familiarity of liens/title structure is a must.
Underwrite with discipline and judgment
· Lead financial modeling, market research, rent and expense assumptions, capex assumptions, debt sizing, exit strategy, downside analysis, and investor return analysis.
· Pressure-test assumptions rather than simply populate models; surface risks plainly; and never use optimistic upside to excuse weak fundamentals.
· Produce clear, accurate, decision-useful investment materials for internal approval, lender discussions, and investor-facing support.
· Coordinate early with Asset Management to test operating assumptions, construction scope, lease-up plans, execution risk, and overall business-plan feasibility.
· Translate underwriting into a concise recommendation: why this opportunity, why now, what could go wrong, and what must be true for Altus to win.
Lead and develop the team
· Set clear priorities, cadence, and accountability for the acquisitions function, utilizing the firm’s implemented Elite Execution System (EES)
· Create a culture of disciplined urgency: fast enough to win good opportunities, patient enough to avoid bad ones.
· Develop analysts and interns into stronger underwriters, researchers, relationship-builders, and investment thinkers.
· Communicate clearly and proactively with the CEO, Asset Management, Investor Relations, Capital Markets, Finance, and fellow team leaders.
· Improve the acquisition process itself: templates, screening standards, model discipline, IC materials, market files, and postmortems on wins and losses.
· Love to learn, search for the discomfort of aggressive personal growth.
Contribute to strategy
· Help identify markets, asset classes, capital structures, and investment themes that fit Altus’s long-term objectives.
· Bring informed recommendations to leadership, grounded in research, pipeline activity, lender feedback, operating realities, and market participant conversations.
· Evaluate opportunities at both the asset and platform level: portfolio fit, fund strategy, operating complexity, investor trust, concentration risk, and long-term enterprise value.
· When asked, serve as the project expert in investor meetings, while Investor Relations continues to lead capital formation and investor relationships.
What Success Looks Like
· The Acquisitions pipeline is active, current, and prioritized, with clear next steps and ownership for each live opportunity.
· Leadership receives concise, candid recommendations rather than model outputs without judgment.
· The team advances fewer weak deals, moves faster on the right ones, and learns from both passes and pursuits.
· The acquisition team is consistently coached to improve in technical skill, judgment, communication, and ownership.
· Brokers, owners, lenders, and partners experience Altus as prepared, responsive, credible, serious and trustworthy.
· The Acquisitions segment consistently executes its Elite Execution System (EES) commitments, with clear RREKs, strong meeting discipline, measurable accountability and team members who understand priorities, ownership, and expectations
How the Role Fits
You will own sourcing, underwriting, negotiations, PSA execution, and debt term sheet procurement. Once those milestones are secured, Asset Management leads escrow, diligence, closing, and business plan execution, with your continued support through closing. This partnership ensures underwriting assumptions are validated operationally and creates a clear division of responsibilities between teams.
Because acquisitions determine what enters the Altus platform, this role serves as a critical filter for capital allocation, risk management, and long-term value creation.
Who You Are
· Sound investment judgment - you can distinguish a real opportunity from a tempting distraction.
· An owner - you clarify the objective, build the process, manage the people, and deliver the result.
· Intellectually honest - you say what is true about a deal, even when it is inconvenient, and you are willing to consistently be introspective in searching for internal biases.
· A relationship builder - you earn trust with brokers, sellers, lenders, partners, investors, and teammates without becoming dependent on broker optimism.
· A disciplined leader - you create accountability without unnecessary bureaucracy.
· Humble and coachable - you lead confidently while continuing to learn.
· Strategically curious - you care why Altus should pursue a market, asset, or partner, not just whether the numbers can be made to work.
· Clear under pressure - you can explain complex risks and tradeoffs in plain language.
· Entrepreneurial - you build where there is no playbook, find creative paths to a deal, and would rather act and adjust than wait for perfect information.
What You Bring
Required
· 5+ years of relevant experience in real estate acquisitions, investments, development, asset management, private equity, brokerage, lending, or a closely related field.
· Demonstrated ability to evaluate investment opportunities and think clearly about risk-adjusted returns, downside protection, financing risk, and execution complexity.
· Strong financial modeling, underwriting, market analysis, and written and verbal communication skills.
· Ability to lead the acquisition segment, manage cross-functional workstreams, and create accountability without overcomplicating the process.
· Credibility with brokers, owners, lenders, partners, and internal leadership.
· Willingness to meet the travel and in-office expectations described below.
Preferred
· Experience sourcing and closing commercial real estate acquisitions.
· Familiarity with value-add, opportunistic, or credit strategies within multifamily, industrial, retail, or adjacent asset classes relevant to Altus’s platform.
· Experience mentoring or managing junior team members.
· Familiarity with debt sizing, lender term sheets, capital-stack structuring, and investor return waterfalls.
· Experience in entrepreneurial, founder-led, or high-accountability environments.
· Existing relationships with brokers, lenders, owners, operators, or developers in markets relevant to Altus.
Location & Travel
· Based in or able to regularly work from Altus’s Chico, California office, with a minimum of 10 days per month in-office for at least the first two years to build a close working relationship with the CEO and accelerate development through direct exposure to senior leadership.
· Travel several days per month to explore markets, tour properties, meet partners, and attend conferences.
· After the first two years, eligibility to work from another Altus office - currently Austin, TX or Greenville, SC or another office added in the future - may be considered at the CEO’s discretion.
This role is not for everyone. If you are not an A+ player or actively working to become one this role is not for you. If you are not hungry for personal challenge and career growth, this role is not for you. If you aren’t willing to do what is right over what is convenient, then this role is not for you. But if you are these things, this could be the opportunity you have been searching for.
Compensation
Compensation will be competitive and structured to align performance, responsibility, and long-term company success. Specific terms will be based on experience, role fit, and final position structure, and may include a base salary plus performance-aligned incentive compensation.
Benefits:
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Employee assistance program
- Flexible spending account
- Health insurance
- Health savings account
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Professional development assistance
- Retirement plan
- Vision insurance
Work Location: In person
