Hi there! Welcome to Jay Roberts’ website.
Early life and education
Jay Roberts was born in Seoul, South Korea. He spent the first three months of his life in an orphanage, as his biological parents were too poor to care for him. At three months old, he was adopted by an American family and immigrated to Honolulu, Hawaii. His family later relocated to Long Beach, California, before finally settling in Seal Beach.
Raised by a single mother who worked as a secretary earning only $30,000 a year, Jay vigorously studied, devoured books and worked seven days a week to create a better life for himself. Jay has a sister named Leslie who he remains close with along with her four children. He attended Los Alamitos High School, where he played football. His senior year the team won the CIF division one championship. Tragically, both of his parents passed away during his senior year of college.
As the first in his family to attend college, Jay earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Driven by a passion for real estate, he then earned an MBA at the NYU Stern School of Business.
Career
After graduating from business school, Jay began his career in real estate investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. He specialized in institutional real estate mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, and capital markets transactions. His team was responsible for the $8 billion carveout and $1.2 billion IPO of MGM Growth Properties, the largest real estate IPO of 2016. They also led Paramount Group’s $2.6 billion IPO, which remains the largest REIT IPO in U.S. history. During his time at Bank of America, Jay worked on financings for companies such as Avalon Bay, Extended Stay America, MGM Resorts, Digital Realty Trust, and Education Realty Trust.
Before joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch, he worked at Training The Street, where he taught financial modeling and Excel best practices to investment banking analysts at firms including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Evercore.
Currently, Jay is the CEO and founder of Prosper Group, a real estate development and investment firm based in Miami, Florida. Prosper Group is actively developing a mixed-use 622-unit condo-hotel on Water Street in downtown Tampa, in partnership with Arc Development, with a sellout of $600 million.
Prosper Group is co-developing a waterfront 147 luxury residential condo project in North Bay Village, Miami Florida with MG Developers.
The firm previously advised on the Legacy Miami World Center, a $400 million development comprising 600,000 square feet of luxury mixed-use condo, hotel, office, and retail space in downtown Miami. This Kobi Karp-designed development features over 300 condos, 200 hotel rooms, and 100,000 square feet of office space at the heart of the Miami World Center.
Prosper Group is actively acquiring irreplaceable land for condo development in Florida and car washes across the United States.
