Steve Novick

Steve Novick is a longtime institutional real estate investment professional whose career centered on Courtland Partners Ltd., a Cleveland-based global real estate consulting and advisory firm founded by Michael Humphrey in 1995. Novick rose to become Courtland's Managing Principal and Chief Operating Officer, and was chairman and a founding member of the firm's investment committee as well as an equity owner. At the time of founder Michael Humphrey's sudden death in November 2016, Novick held a roughly 10% ownership stake in the firm (Humphrey held about 90%). In the wake of that loss, Novick helped lead the firm through a succession process that ultimately resulted in its sale.

Courtland was a substantial institutional advisory business: by the time of its 2018 acquisition it advised more than 60 clients on over $82 billion of real estate and infrastructure investments worldwide, operating from offices including 127 Public Square in Cleveland. The firm's work was consulting- and advisory-led — non-discretionary and discretionary real assets advice to large institutional investors such as pension funds — rather than venture or angel investing.

In January 2018, StepStone Real Estate (SRE), the real estate arm of the global private markets firm StepStone Group, agreed to acquire Courtland Partners; the deal closed on April 3, 2018 (Ocean Park Securities advised Courtland on the sale). Upon completion, Novick became a Partner of StepStone Group Real Estate and was tasked with overseeing Courtland's existing client relationships as the businesses integrated. He framed the combination as expanding Courtland clients' access to StepStone's larger global footprint and international real estate capabilities.

His tenure at StepStone appears to have been brief: trade publication PERE (Private Equity Real Estate) reported on June 21, 2018 — only weeks after the deal closed — that StepStone was "to lose" a partner from its real assets/real estate consulting business. The StepStone team page that once carried Novick's bio now redirects to the firm's homepage, consistent with a departure, though the destination of any subsequent role was behind a paywall and could not be confirmed from open sources.

• Asset class: Institutional real estate and real assets / infrastructure — not technology, angel, or seed-stage investing. Treat the stub's "Seed Round / Angel" labels as unverified and most likely incorrect.
• Model: At Courtland, the business was advisory and consulting-led — guiding large institutions (pensions, sovereign and other LP-type clients) on real estate and infrastructure portfolio construction, manager selection, and monitoring, across both non-discretionary and discretionary mandates.
• Stated view (own words): "SRE and StepStone's greater global footprint will enhance Courtland's ability to provide its clients advice on international real estate opportunities." He also said the "Courtland team is very excited to be a part of SRE" and that "Courtland's clients have a high regard for StepStone."
• What this implies: His decisions historically have been oriented around serving large institutional clients and global real estate/real assets exposure, not writing personal angel checks into startups.