Scott Knauer

Scott Knauer is a veteran Phoenix-area commercial real estate executive with more than 25 years of experience in real estate acquisitions, advisory services, development, and management. Across his career he has directed the development, acquisition, management, and divestiture of properties valued in excess of $5 billion. He studied Business Administration and Economics at Arizona State University and holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Liverpool.

In May 2010, Knauer was appointed Managing Director, Real Estate at Pivotal Group, a Phoenix-based private entrepreneurial investment firm spanning private equity, private credit, real estate, and public equity. There he was responsible for originating, analyzing, and acquiring real estate–related investment opportunities and helped direct the firm's real estate investment strategy and capital formation efforts, with an acquisition strategy targeting underperforming and distressed assets across hotels, resorts, office, multifamily, mixed-use, and master-planned communities.

Before Pivotal Group, Knauer was Principal and Chief Investment Officer of Orion Residential in Scottsdale, Arizona, a residential real estate investment organization, where he led the acquisition of more than $1.2 billion in multifamily properties nationwide. Earlier, as Co-Founder and Managing Director of Starwood West (a Starwood Capital affiliate), he played a key role in landmark Arizona projects including the Scottsdale Waterfront, the Biltmore Mountain Estates, and Legend Trail.

More recently, Knauer joined Colliers as Senior Vice President and Institutional Relationship Manager on the national Colliers Cooke Multifamily Team (announced November 2024), focusing on institutional relationships in multifamily real estate. He is also recognized as a speaker at universities and real estate/finance conferences and is described as a founding member of Social Venture Partners, reflecting an interest in philanthropy and business development.

• Focuses on institutional real estate, particularly multifamily, plus hotels/resorts, office, mixed-use, and master-planned communities.
• Pursues value-add and distressed/underperforming assets that can be repositioned — at Pivotal he led an acquisition strategy explicitly targeting underperforming and distressed properties.
• In his own words on opportunistic acquisition: *"The current market offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire well-located, quality real estate at deep discounts."*
• Emphasizes well-located, quality real estate and capital formation — sourcing, analyzing, and acquiring deals and aligning institutional capital with them.
• *No publicly verifiable evidence of startup/seed-stage angel investing, check sizes, or a startup target-company profile was found; the available record is real estate investment.*