Clay Decker
Director of Acquisitions + Development
Acquisitions & Dispositions
Always Looking for New Opportunities
United Group has a successful history of developing and managing properties starting from an empty plot of land. Additionally, there is almost always an interest in acquiring distressed properties to either renovate or manage.
Acquisitions Team
Clay Decker
Director of Acquisitions + Development
As Director of Acquisitions + Development, Clay is responsible for advancing the company’s interests in property acquisition, which will engage the full capabilities of United Group. These efforts create opportunities to refurbish, reposition, and improve underperforming assets along with pursuing additional new ground-up development projects in various markets. Clay supports other development projects in the capacity of preparation of sophisticated cash flow analyses, proformas, development valuation, valuation modeling, joint ventures, and complex financing for a broad range of real estate products and transactions.
Clay was formerly United Group’s Senior Financial Analysist. In that role, he was responsible for the underwriting of each project. This entails incorporating and communicating all development costs, debt financing, operating revenues, and expenses along with Investor returns. The Analyst role worked closely with the Development, Finance and Operation teams to ensure accurate modeling and forecasting of each development deal.
Clay worked as a Senior Financial Analyst for Cushman & Wakefield where he provided underwriting and analysis to assess alternatives, optimize deal structures and delivers detailed cash and accounting metrics associated with proposed transactions including the new lease accounting rules.
Clay began his career at State Street Bank within the Investment Services division overseeing the day-to-day functions across multiple funds. He joined the Global Real Estate group as a Business Analyst where he worked on a global corporate real estate portfolio comprising 7.5M SF across 23 countries and 84 properties. As part of the Global Real Estate group, Clay was responsible for the market, demographic, economic and geographical information used to develop portfolio and transaction strategies. He was promoted to Assistant Vice President where he managed the analytics teams responsible for measurement, monitoring and reporting of the key performance metrics for the global real estate portfolio.
Clay earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics, State University of New York at Albany.
Thomas J. Uccellini
Senior Managing Director
As Senior Managing Director of Finance, Tom works within a small team within United Group’s finance division that has sourced over $500 million in debt, equity and mezzanine financing. Since 2001, Tom has been involved in every aspect of United’s development process from site selection through construction. Under the construction management-arm he oversaw two senior housing development projects with a total value of $30 million and two student housing projects totaling $75 million that included 1200 beds at the State University at Albany. He then transitioned into development where he completed an $80 million, 60-acre, 254-unit intergenerational community from site selection through construction.
Tom earned a B.S. in Business Management and Technology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He currently sits on the board of trustees for the Saratoga Senior Center. He is a two-time New York State Greco-Roman wrestling champ as well as a two-time All American.
Keith Axelrod
Senior Managing Director
As Senior Managing Director in the Finance Group at The United Group, Keith works in a number of capacities dealing with both debt and equity financing for existing properties and those in our development pipeline. This includes financial analysis, providing debt and equity reporting to prospective sources, working with brokers, as well as networking with institutional and private capital sources.
He is also a Senior Vice President at United Group’s Broker Dealer, MCM Securities, LLC as well as a Registered Representative and hold the Series 24 General Securities Principal License, as well as the SIE, Series 82, Series 99 and 63 Finra Licenses.
In addition, Keith is responsible for assisting with investor reporting through United Investor Services. In raising private debt and equity through MCM Securities, he meets with various individuals, companies and entities including Medical Doctors, Hospitals, Medical Practices, Health Care Professionals, Financial Firms, Attorneys, Business Owners, Management Directors and other potential investors.
On a personal note, Keith was President of The Mid Hudson Road Runners Club and Race Director of The Dutchess County Classic for over 14 years and was an avid Marathon Runner.
Prior to working at United Group, Keith owned and operated a full service advertising and marketing firm.
Keith holds a Bachelor of Science degree in communications from Charter Oak College.
