Background
Michaels was born to a Jewish family in Flatbush, Brooklyn in 1955 but was raised in Deer Park, New New York His father worked in a retail carpet store where Michaels also occasionally worked.
Michaels was born to a Jewish family in Flatbush, Brooklyn in 1955 but was raised in Deer Park, New New York His father worked in a retail carpet store where Michaels also occasionally worked.
In 1977, he graduated from American University in Washington, District of Columbia
After school, he accepted a job with 3M selling copy machines and then accepted a position with Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (now Cigna) before moving on to the Manhattan-based real estate syndicator Island Planning. Island Planning pooled together funds from multiple investors to fund real estate transactions. In the mid-1990s, he ventured out on his own and formed the Carlton Group in Manhattan (also retaining his interest in the Carlton Brokerage).
At the time, securitization transactions were replacing syndications and the Carlton Group ventured into this new product.
Significant transactions include the 2007 financing of the $350 million Trump Soho. The 2005 financing of the $825 million equity and condo conversion financing of Manhattan House.
And the 2004, $1.7 billion recapitalization of the General Motors Building. The Carlton Group focuses on raising money from high-Netto-worth individuals and institutions to provide 80 to 100 percent of the capital required for a real estate project
Based in New York City, the Carlton Group also has operations in Chicago, Los Angeles, Florida, Athens, and London.
Seeing that securitizations were a commodity product, Michaels returned to what he did best: bringing high-Netto-worth investors and real estate developers together. Carlton has a reputation for getting the hard deals done and focuses on working with individual developers rather than institutions.