View Neighborhoods by Vespera -- 38 Hope Street Western Avenue Studios Cedar Lane

• Neighborhoods
• About Us
• What's New
• Brokers
• Contact

• Home
•  /  About Us
•  /  Vespera Team

Vespera Team

Ultimately, our business is about much more than land and resources. It’s about people. It involves the people who live in and care for the communities where we build. It involves our customers, the people who buy our homes and put their businesses in our shops and offices. It may involve other residential and commercial builders with whom we enter into partnership. It involves the brokerage community, a vital element in the mix. And it involves us, the Vespera team. It’s time we became acquainted.

Karl Frey, Principal

Karl is a graduate of the Sloan School of Management at MIT and is a 24-year veteran of the real estate industry, with broad experience in all aspects of real estate investment including entitlement, ground-up development, acquisitions, finance, leasing and sales. Through Vespera, he is pioneering the field of smart development in the Northeast, whereby historically and socially sensitive development projects are structured to create and enable conservation efforts with unprecedented results.

Prior to his involvement in Vespera, Karl was a Managing Director at Starwood Capital, where he was a member of Starwood's Executive and Investment Committees and was responsible for originating, underwriting and structuring equity investments totaling more than $1.7 billion. Before joining Starwood, he was a Managing Director for MetLife Realty Group, in charge of nationwide acquisition activities for the firm’s clients. His career also includes management positions with The Home Depot, Insignia Financial, AIG and MetFirst Financial. During his tenure with these firms, Karl had direct responsibility for development, financing and sales transactions totaling $1.6 billion.

Justin Mandelbaum, Principal

Justin is a graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Real Estate and Finance, and comes from a family of real estate entrepreneurs. With Karl, Justin has worked to establish Vespera’s reputation as one of the Northeast’s premier smart growth developers. At Vespera, he underwrites and structures development programs to establish the critical interdependence between real estate projects and conservation efforts. Justin leads the team of architects, builders, planners, and other team members to ensure seamless transitions from conception to execution.

Prior to his involvement in Vespera, Justin developed broad evaluation and execution expertise as a member of the acquisition team at Starwood Capital and worked on a variety of acquisition and development projects in the senior housing, student housing, residential, hotel, office, and retail real estate sectors. Before joining Starwood, Justin gained significant experience in underwriting real estate and non-performing loans in the Japan office of Goldman Sachs’ Whitehall Street Real Estate Funds.

Carrie Hiltscher, Director of Sales and Marketing

Carrie is a graduate of San Diego State University with degrees in Political Science and English. She comes from a family of residential construction and marketing professionals, so real estate marketing is in her blood. At Vespera, Carrie oversees the marketing and sales programs for all of the company’s projects, and she manages the brand in all activities and communications.

In a career that already spans 17 years, Carrie was recently Sales and Marketing Director for KB Home's Orange County Division. Before that she was Marketing Director at Brookfield Homes where she became experienced in product development, architecture review, merchandising and landscape architecture. And at William Lyon Homes, for more than a decade, Carrie "did everything – from acting as sales assistant, sales manager and sales trainer to developing their options programs and design studios."

Mollie Masten, Manager

Mollie is a graduate of William Smith College with degrees in Economics and Public Policy. At Vespera, she oversees project reporting, corporate compliance, project coordination and entity formation. She also manages day-to-day operations and bookkeeping for the company.

Prior to joining Vespera, Mollie was a real estate paralegal at Rinaldi, Finkelstein & Franklin, where she assisted with the acquisition and disposition of real estate assets, initial public offerings, corporate compliance, license applications, entity formations and general transactional law exclusively for Starwood Capital Group. While at RFF, Mollie was instrumental in establishing the legal foundation to create Starwood’s London office. She also served as the relationship manager of domestic and international portfolios for over 700 entities.