Most guidance on illiquid positions is written as if a holder has exactly one: a limited partnership interest, or a block of private company stock, or a real estate syndication stake, or a mineral royalty. In practice, the holders who most need liquidity rarely have just one. A family office winding down a founder's legacy portfolio, or an estate settling a decedent's holdings, is far more likely to be sitting on several different illiquid positions at once, each with its own broker, its own paperwork, and its own timeline.
A holder with several illiquid positions across different asset types, for example a private fund interest, a real estate limited partnership stake, and a mineral royalty, typically has to run a separate sale process with a separate specialist buyer for each one, because the secondary market for illiquid assets is organized by asset class rather than by holder. A single buyer able to underwrite and close across multiple asset types at once removes that duplication, consolidating three or more disconnected processes into one point of contact and one closing timeline.
Why illiquid positions rarely come in just one type
Private markets exposure has become a standard, not a niche, component of sophisticated portfolios. In Campden Wealth's 2025 North America Family Office Report, produced with RBC and covering 141 single and private multi-family offices representing a collective $285 billion in wealth, private market investments were the largest single asset class in the average family office portfolio, at 29 percent of holdings. That 29 percent is rarely a single position. It is typically spread across multiple fund vintages, direct co-investments, and sometimes real estate or royalty interests acquired alongside the core private equity and venture allocation.
The same pattern shows up outside family offices. A retiring founder may hold private stock in the company they built, a real estate limited partnership interest from a 1031 exchange years ago, and a small royalty stake inherited from a relative. An estate settling a decedent's affairs may find fund interests, private stock certificates, and mineral rights filed in the same drawer, acquired at different times for different reasons, with no single advisor who has ever looked at all of them together.
None of this is unusual. It is the ordinary residue of a long investing or operating life. What is unusual is how little the secondary market for illiquid assets has adapted to it.
The cost of running three separate sale processes
The market for selling illiquid positions is organized by asset class, not by holder. Secondary funds and platforms serving limited partners in private equity and venture funds generally do not buy real estate partnership interests. Firms specializing in real estate LP secondaries generally do not buy mineral royalties. Royalty and mineral rights buyers generally do not touch private company stock. Each specialist is built to underwrite one kind of asset well, and that specialization is exactly why they exist.
For a holder with only one type of illiquid position, that specialization is a feature. For a holder with three or four different types, it means three or four separate conversations, each starting from zero:
- A different buyer to vet for each asset type, with no track record to compare across them.
- A different diligence process and document request for each: a fund's LPA and capital account statements, a partnership's operating agreement and K-1s, a royalty's division order and payment history.
- A different negotiation and closing timeline for each, often running in parallel with no coordination between them.
- Confidentiality exposure multiplied by the number of separate counterparties who now know about the holder's broader financial position.
Each of those steps is manageable in isolation. Run three or four of them simultaneously, on top of whatever else the holder or their advisor is already managing, and the aggregate time and coordination cost becomes the actual barrier to getting liquid, more than any single transaction's complexity.
What a single-buyer, cross-asset process actually looks like
A buyer willing and able to underwrite more than one asset type changes the shape of the problem. Instead of three vetting processes, there is one counterparty to evaluate. Instead of three sets of documents going to three different parties, there is one intake. Instead of three closings on three different timelines, there is one process moving multiple positions toward a decision at the same time.
This does not mean every position gets the same offer logic. A fund interest, a real estate LP stake, and a royalty are priced on entirely different bases, described in the comparison below. A single-buyer process consolidates the point of contact and the underwriting relationship, not the pricing methodology, which still has to reflect what each asset actually is.
The practical benefit shows up most clearly for a family office or an estate's executor, who is typically not a specialist in any one of these asset classes and is instead trying to convert a mixed, illiquid portfolio into cash or into assets the estate or the family can actually use, on a timeline that doesn't stretch across several unrelated engagements.
How pricing differs across asset types
Consolidating the process does not mean flattening the pricing. Each asset type carries its own drivers of value, and a credible cross-asset buyer prices each on its own terms rather than applying a single formula across all of them.
| Asset Type | Primary Pricing Driver | Key Documentation | Typical Transfer Friction |
|---|---|---|---|
| LP / fund interest | NAV, remaining fund life, GP quality, distribution pace | LPA, capital account statements, recent capital calls/distributions | GP consent or right of first refusal under the LPA |
| Private company stock | Last-round valuation, share class (common vs. preferred), cap table position | Stockholder agreement, stock certificate or grant documents, latest available financials | Company or investor right of first refusal; transfer restrictions in the equity grant |
| Real estate LP interest | Underlying property performance, debt structure, sponsor track record | Partnership/operating agreement, K-1s, most recent property financials | GP or partnership consent; lender consent if debt is involved |
| Royalty / mineral rights | Production history, remaining reserve life, commodity price exposure | Division order, deed, payment/production history | Generally the least restricted of the four; often no consent requirement |
The variation in this table is exactly why asset-class specialists exist, and exactly why a cross-asset buyer's value is in coordinating the process across these differences, not in pretending they don't exist.
When it makes sense to sell several positions at once
Not every cross-asset holder should sell everything simultaneously. A single-buyer process makes the most sense when at least one of the following is true: the holder or executor has limited bandwidth to run parallel processes, confidentiality across multiple counterparties is a real concern, one or more of the positions is small enough that a specialist buyer wouldn't prioritize it on its own, or there is a practical deadline, such as an estate settlement, that benefits from resolving multiple holdings on a coordinated timeline rather than whichever specialist happens to move fastest.
Where a holder has only one illiquid position, or where each position is large enough to warrant its own dedicated specialist process, running them separately may still be the better path. The point of a cross-asset process is to remove unnecessary duplication, not to argue that consolidation is always optimal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to sell all my illiquid positions at the same time to use a cross-asset buyer?
No. A cross-asset buyer can evaluate multiple positions in one intake process and still make separate offers on separate timelines. The consolidation is in the point of contact and the underwriting relationship, not a requirement to close everything on the same date.
Will a single buyer really pay a fair price across asset types they don't specialize in as deeply as a niche buyer would?
This is the legitimate tradeoff to weigh. A single-asset specialist may have deeper comparables for that one asset type. Whether the convenience of one process outweighs a potentially better price from a specialist depends on the size of each position and how much the holder's time and confidentiality are worth. It's a fair question to ask any cross-asset buyer directly, including how they price the specific asset type in question.
Does selling a partnership interest or fund stake trigger a taxable event even if the position has been marked down?
Generally yes. A sale of a partnership or LLC interest is a taxable event under federal tax law regardless of whether the position is currently marked above or below the holder's basis, and the character of any gain can be affected by "hot assets" such as unrealized receivables under Internal Revenue Code Section 751. The IRS's own Large Business & International division practice unit on the sale of a partnership interest walks through this mechanism in detail. This is a question for the holder's own tax advisor on the specific facts; nothing here is tax advice.
Is there a minimum combined value to make a cross-asset sale worth pursuing?
Position-by-position minimums vary by buyer. As a general practice, positions valued under $100,000 individually are typically better served by a local broker-dealer or asset-specific specialist than by an institutional buyer built around larger, complex holdings.
What happens if one of my positions requires GP or company consent to transfer and the others don't?
Each position proceeds on its own consent and documentation track. A royalty interest with no consent requirement, for example, can often close well before a fund interest that needs GP sign-off. Running them through one process doesn't force them onto the same timeline; it just means one party is coordinating all of the tracks instead of three or four separate counterparties each moving independently.
Who typically ends up in this situation, holding several unrelated illiquid positions?
Most commonly: family offices consolidating a founder's or prior generation's legacy portfolio, executors and trustees settling an estate with mixed holdings, and long-time individual investors and former operators who accumulated positions across different investments over a long career without ever needing liquidity from any of them until now.
Methodology and sourcing note: this article draws on Campden Wealth and RBC's 2025 North America Family Office Report for portfolio-composition data and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service's published Large Business & International practice unit on the sale of a partnership interest for tax-treatment mechanics. General secondary-market process descriptions (LPA consent, ROFR mechanics, K-1 and division-order documentation) reflect standard market practice for each asset class rather than a single named source. Last updated: July 2026.