Steve Wiktoff paced back and forth in a conference room at his partnership’s New York City office, eager to talk about his latest endeavors, but just as eager to tackle the other 10 commitments that had come his way over the course of the first of several interviews with The Mortgage Observer. Read More
JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson is out… as keynote speaker at next month’s ICSC RECon 2013 conference.
The head of arguably the most embattled U.S. retailer was probably an odd choice all along for the event, which takes place May 19 through 22 in Las Vegas. Read More
Mortgage Observer Weekly has learned that a $310 million CMBS loan on 120 Broadway closed last week, likely at a rate in the mid-2 percent range. Wells Fargo originated the loan.
A previous CMBS loan on the building had an outstanding balance of $215 million. Originated back in May of 2006, it was set to mature in June 2013, according to data from Trepp. Read More
The Mortgage Observer met with Steve Kohn, head of one of three service lines under the capital markets department at Cushman & Wakefield. Mr. Kohn shared his outlook for 2013 and details about he types of deals his growing group is busy working on.
The Mortgage Observer: How did you get your start in the industry?
Steve Kohn: My first job in real estate was with Reliance Development Group, which was a subsidiary of Reliance Insurance in Philadelphia. The president of Reliance Development Group was a gentleman named Henry Lambert, who still is very active in real estate here in New York City. He hired me, and I actually worked for his other business—he had a food business called Pasta & Cheese. I worked for the summers at Pasta & Cheese, and then when I graduated college, I knew that he had a big job in real estate.
What were you doing for him? Read More
It seems like the perfect storm: investors are paying record prices to acquire residential rental apartments in metropolitan areas. And at the same time, financial institutions—especially regional and local commercial and savings banks—are offering the lowest rates for long-term financing for this asset class. Ramping up the competition, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, insurance companies, CMBS and conduits are all offering borrowers low rates, with terms we have not experienced in decades. Read More
CMBS issuers are on a roll. The best January on record has propelled first-quarter 2013 volume past $20 billion, a milestone that has otherwise eluded the market for more than five years. Few issuers expect a slowdown in activity over the next year. Both for fusion deals and single-asset transactions, securitization has become an increasingly more competitive option as spreads have narrowed. The single-asset market has leapfrogged the recovery in multi-borrower deals and is on track to surpass its previous peak. After years of middling progress, the CMBS market overall is reasserting itself as investors’ tolerance for risk-taking recovers. Read More
The Garden State has become fertile ground for developers, and commercial real estate lenders both large and small are looking to get in on the action, while others are looking to retain and expand the market share they already have.
Competition among lenders is quickly growing as more people look to rent in New Jersey, the most urbanized state in the country, 94.7 percent of whose population is centered in urban areas, according to 2010 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. That abundance of multifamily properties just west of the Hudson River coincides with university expansions, new retail and office properties and other large real estate projects throughout the state.
Brian Whitmer, a senior director in investment sales for the New York tristate area at Cushman & Wakefield, works out of northern New Jersey and went through the pipeline of multifamily developments he sees in the works there. Of the 22,968 units he found in the pipeline in northern New Jersey, 59 percent, or 13,538 units, are in the Gold Coast—areas along the Hudson River like Jersey City, Hoboken and Weehawken. Read More
How do you know when the commercial real estate financing market has gotten out of control and become irrationally exuberant?
If you’re a mezzanine lender, you look for three things. First, have non-real-estate players such as hedge funds started to come into the mezzanine debt market? Second, has the deluge of new players caused a substantial drop in pricing? And third, are other funding sources offering to finance mezzanine lenders on very favorable terms? Read More
od I hate these lists,” said one investment shop pro when asked to weigh in on what constituted “important” and who, exactly, might qualify for a list of the 50 Most Important People in Commercial Real Estate Finance.
In compiling the list—which is subjective and represents our view—we talked to many different people in Read More
Several sources confirm that Starwood Property Trust is in the final stages of issuing a $450 million construction loan for phase one of Related Companies’ Hudson Yards project. The loan is expected to close within the next 30 days. Read More
Got a chunk of change lying around? With a book of business north of $5.5 billion, Rosemary Vrablic, a managing director in the asset and wealth management division at Deutsche Bank, can help.
Private banking is loosely defined as personalized financial services offered by banks to their high-net-worth clients. And the top providers are largely holding steady, according to 2011 year-end results from U.K.-based private wealth management consultancy and research firm Scorpio Partnership.
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On Tuesday January 15 in the middle of the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council’s January 2013 conference, The Mortgage Observer was joined by conference attendees for our event celebrating the conference at Miami’s STK. The Collins Avenue bar and steakhouse played host to industry insiders and Observer Media Group staff, who spent an evening talking Read More
[11:30 a.m.] We’re done…
[11:25 a.m.] Large servicers have done a great job of driving technology. Leads to efficiency. Smaller companies that focus on value add side, focus can be on making sure that more customized servicer, other than just driving cost, are provided.
[11:20 a.m.] Send your questions for this panel to questions@crefc.org Read More
[4:30 p.m.] We’re done! Thanks for following and check back tomorrow for liveblogs of additional panels–and follow us on Twitter at @commercial_nyo and @carlosville.
[4:26 p.m.] Question: How likely is it that rates will stay low not just through 2014, but for the next 5 years? Answer: Possible, he says. We could be patterning Read More
Monday afternoon, as the CRE Finance Council‘s January 2013 conference got underway, security from the Loews Miami Beach Hotel, with good reason, was making sure to check IDs as attendees made their way to the section of the hotel reserved for the afternoon’s meetings. A guard told The Mortgage Observer that it wasn’t uncommon for players to try to forgo the registration fee and opt, instead, to suit up and make a run for it.
It was a phenomenon that we, in fact, witnessed for ourselves, while waiting to chat with CRE Finance Council CEO Stephen Renna. Apparently, the group’s efforts to grow the conference–and expand the relevance of the organization–have paid off and made it one hot ticket. Read More
