From an office window, Jon Moyer watched as employees carrying boxes of documents spilled onto Park Avenue in New York City as Bear Stearns unraveled around them.
That crisis and subsequent Great Recession would soon force a dramatic reset of his own career, a winding journey leading him today to serve as director of acquisitions at Bendetti. In that role, he helps the Irvine, California-based investor expand its portfolio of industrial properties across the western United States.
“I’ve landed on my feet several times. Every time something happened, I had to figure out what came next.”
His path to industrial real estate involved more than the collapse of an investment bank. The journey has included professional surfing competitions in Europe and Australia, residential mortgage lending, private banking in New York, retail real estate in Hawaii and the challenges of rebuilding his life after losing his wife to cancer. Through it all, he's learned to keep looking ahead. “I’ve landed on my feet several times,” Moyer told CoStar News. “Every time something happened, I had to figure out what came next.”
Those experiences now shape how he views industrial real estate. The small manufacturers, contractors and entrepreneurs that occupy Bendetti’s buildings remind him of the retailers he once worked with in Hawaii, business owners whose livelihoods are often tied directly to the properties they lease.
As Bendetti pursues new acquisitions in a market reshaped by higher interest rates and slower development activity, Moyer is helping identify opportunities across a region that stretches far beyond Southern California, searching for deals in much the same way he once sought out waves.
From surfing to real estate
Long before he was underwriting industrial acquisitions, Moyer spent his mornings in the water.
Growing up in Huntington Beach, California, he earned sponsorships from surf brands including Billabong and traveled through France, Spain, Portugal, Australia, Tahiti, Japan and Hawaii competing on the World Qualifying Series while pursuing a professional surfing career.
A back injury changed those plans. The setback pushed him toward Cal State Long Beach, where he studied finance.
After graduating during the dot-com downturn, Moyer spent a day walking into banks looking for work. Five turned him away before a manager at Bank of America offered him a job in residential lending.
An MBA from the University of Maryland eventually took Moyer to New York, where he joined M&T Bank expecting to build a career in private banking.
About a month after his arrival, executives informed him the private banking division was being shut down and reassigned him to structured real estate finance. The unexpected move became his introduction to commercial real estate.
Then, from his Wall Street vantage point, he saw the financial system began to crack.
The turmoil eventually reached his own career. After joining Arden Realty’s acquisitions team in Los Angeles, Moyer watched parent company GE Capital halt investment activity as markets deteriorated, leaving much of the acquisitions group out of work.
Island chapter begins
A connection from GE eventually helped Moyer land at Hawaii's largest owner of neighborhood shopping centers, Alexander & Baldwin, kicking off what he describes as one of the most rewarding chapters of his career.
The company was redeploying capital across the islands and acquired the $383 million Kaneohe Ranch portfolio, one of the largest transactions in its history. After helping source investments, Moyer suddenly found himself managing one of the company’s most significant assets.
“We’re about to close on this thing and everybody started looking around the table asking who was going to run it,” he said.
The portfolio included grocery-anchored retail centers, local businesses and national brands across Oahu’s windward side. Managing it taught him lessons about tenant relationships and small-business operators that still influence how he evaluates industrial properties today.
For several years, life felt stable. He and his wife, Carey, a Disney executive helping develop the company’s Aulani resort on Oahu, were building careers and raising a family in Hawaii.
Then Carey, who had been treated for breast cancer, saw it return.
The family moved back to California seeking further treatment and to be closer to relatives and friends who could help. Moyer commuted between California and Hawaii while helping care for his wife and two small children.
After Carey died in 2019, Moyer faced a challenge far removed from underwriting models and acquisition strategies.
“I had to rebuild my life,” he said.
Building the future
That rebuilding process eventually led Moyer back into acquisitions.
He joined industrial developer CREDE, where he pursued land deals in Texas and Arizona during a period when soaring construction costs and rising interest rates were making new development increasingly difficult to justify.
The experience shaped the investment thesis he now helps execute at Bendetti. Rather than betting on ground-up construction, the firm often looks for industrial properties that can be repositioned through leasing, renovations and active management.
Since joining Bendetti in 2023, Moyer has lead approximately $250 million of industrial acquisitions and recapitalizations across the western United States. During that period, Bendetti has broken into highly competitive markets like Phoenix, while continuing to focus on growth in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Texas.
Last year, Moyer helped lead Bendetti’s first acquisition in San Diego, a 72,158-square-foot multitenant industrial property in Otay Mesa. The four-unit building sat only partially leased when Bendetti acquired it, giving the company room to grow occupancy in one of Southern California’s most active industrial markets.
“San Diego continues to demonstrate strong fundamentals and long-term growth potential for multitenant industrial properties,” Moyer said at the time.
The strategy became even more visible this year when Bendetti and Chicago-based Singerman Real Estate sold Southern Way Industrial, a 635,000-square-foot portfolio in Sparks, Nevada, for $71 million after paying $35 million for the properties in 2019.
When the partners acquired the portfolio, just over half the space was occupied. New roofs, upgraded landscaping, refreshed building facades and standardized signage had already begun transforming the properties before Bendetti stepped in to help drive the next chapter of leasing and value creation.
“Functional, well-located light industrial properties in great markets are our focus and where our vertically integrated platform shines,” Moyer said.
On a typical week, Moyer might be touring industrial parks in Southern California, evaluating occupancy reports in Nevada or meeting brokers in search of the next acquisition opportunity. He spends part of nearly every other week on the road looking at deals with the same curiosity that once took him around the world as a competitive surfer.
The assets may have changed from waves to warehouses, but the search is remarkably similar, he said.
"One theme that has been consistent throughout my life is adaptation. Surfing taught me that long before I entered business," he said. "Every wave is different. Conditions change constantly. You can spend hours studying a lineup, but ultimately you have to make decisions in real time based on what the ocean gives you. Business has been very similar in my experience. Markets change, capital markets shift, opportunities emerge where you least expect them, and sometimes wipeouts happen."