Real Estate Development and Advisory

Every phase. Every room.
Every deal.

Twenty years directing complex hospitality and commercial real estate development across New York City and major US markets, from acquisitions and underwriting through entitlements, construction, operations and stabilization. Direct access to a senior principal, not a junior team.

Start a Conversation →

What I Do

What full-cycle ownership looks like.

Development Strategy & Execution

Full-lifecycle advisory for hospitality, mixed-use, and select-service hotel repositioning. Underwriting, entitlements, design, construction, brand negotiation, and operations handoff under one trusted principal.

Principal Investment & Partnership

SWAE NYC is built to engage as a principal, not only as an advisor. Equity participation and co-investment are built into the practice model, not exceptions to it.

Asset Repositioning & Distressed Advisory

Strategic repositioning for underperforming, stalled, and lender-owned assets. As the 2026 CMBS maturity wave brings distressed urban hospitality to market, owners need an operator who knows where the value is.

Market Intelligence & Strategic Diligence

Deal-level and market-level intelligence for institutional operators and alternative capital platforms entering the US market, fluent in NYC's regulatory, brand, and construction landscape.

Owner's Representation

A single point of accountability coordinating architects, contractors, brand operators, and capital partners, protecting your timeline, budget, and vision from day one through stabilization.

Technology Integration Across the Deal

Technology is not a separate phase of the deal. It runs through every one. SWAE NYC brings an active operator lens to the PropTech landscape, evaluating what actually works in the field, integrating tools into real workflows, and keeping judgment where no software can replace it. For PropTech companies: a real operator voice, applied at the stage where institutional adoption is won or lost.

PropTech Advisory

The operator layer is where technology stalls.

Real estate technology still stalls at the operator layer. The bottleneck isn't the technology. It's the translation. Most platforms are built by people who have never sat in a construction meeting, negotiated a brand-standards package, or explained a capital stack to an investor.

SWAE NYC operates at that intersection. With active engagement across the PropTech landscape, identifying tools that automate the routine, organize complexity, and keep judgment where it belongs, I bring a forward-thinking lens to every engagement.

For PropTech companies, I offer what no marketing hire can provide: genuine institutional operator credibility. I can evaluate your product against real project conditions, identify where it fits in an operator's workflow, and open doors that cold outreach never will.

The best technology amplifies operator expertise. It doesn't replace it. I help real estate operators discover what's worth adopting, what actually works in the field, and how to integrate it without losing the human layer where the real decisions live.

Operator Workflow Integration Institutional Adoption Emerging Capital Markets PropTech Advisory

The Foundation

Before the technology, there is the deal.

Real estate development is a discipline measured in decades, not projects. The foundation of SWAE NYC is twenty years of hands-on direction across the full project lifecycle, from site selection and underwriting through entitlements, design development, construction administration, and operations handoff. The practice is anchored in New York City and active nationally.

Engagements with SWAE NYC are led by a single senior principal with twenty years of institutional-grade development experience. There is no overhead of a large firm, no competing loyalties of an in-house team, and no junior layer between you and the expertise the deal requires.

Across two decades, the work has spanned the full spectrum of hospitality and commercial development: ground-up construction of select-service and full-service hotels, adaptive reuse and repositioning of legacy assets, mixed-use development with residential and retail components, and high-profile flagship properties requiring coordination across dozens of consultants and stakeholders.

Branded real estate is its own discipline. Franchise negotiations, brand standards, and operator agreements require someone who has been on the owner's side of those conversations enough times to know where the real leverage is.

Underwriting & Feasibility Entitlements & Approvals Design & Construction Management Brand Negotiation NYC Regulatory Process Mixed-Use Development Hospitality Development Value-Add Repositioning Market Entry Strategy Owner's Representation

Principal Engagement

The right deal calls for more than advice.

SWAE NYC is structured to engage not only as an advisor but as a principal. Equity participation and co-investment are built into the practice model, not exceptions to it.

In any JV structure, SWAE NYC brings what capital alone cannot: operator credibility, brand relationships, and the development judgment to know what the deal actually requires. Twenty years of knowing which deals are worth being in, and how to structure a partnership that works for everyone, is the foundation of both.

About

The deal requires credibility in every room.

Meghan Bobertz

Founder & President, SWAE NYC

Meghan Bobertz is a senior real estate development executive with 20+ years directing complex hospitality, mixed-use, and commercial projects from acquisitions and entitlement through stabilization, with $500M+ in project value delivered.

"I am a development leader who is equally credible in a design meeting, a construction meeting, an investor presentation, and a brand strategy session. I see the whole board. I never lose either end of it."

At The Lightstone Group, she partnered with Marriott to launch the Moxy hotel brand from 0-to-1 in the US market, scaling it nationally across a 1,000+ key portfolio while directing three concurrent NYC properties through design, construction, brand development, and pre-opening. Before that, she directed The Public Hotel alongside Ian Schrager at The Witkoff Group, managing all phases of one of New York City's most complex and high-profile hospitality developments. She began her career at Gardiner & Theobald, one of the world's leading owner's representative and project management firms, where she built the foundation of her owner-side practice.

Her training in architecture gives her a fluency in design and construction that most development executives don't have. She reads drawings, runs meetings with architects and engineers, and holds contractors accountable at a technical level. Combined with her experience on the capital and brand side, it means she can represent an owner's interests across every discipline without losing the thread.

SWAE NYC is the independent practice built on that career: direct access to institutional-grade expertise, without the overhead of a large firm or the gaps of a generalist advisor.

Every phase. Every room.Every deal.