Mortgage Observer

Q&A: Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. President and CEO David Durning

By Carl Gaines 12/02 2:00pm

David Durning

Roughly a year after taking the helm as president and CEO of Prudential Mortgage Capital Company and nearing the end of a very busy year in terms of deal volume, Mr. Durning catches up Mortgage Observer on his transition and outlook for the future.

Mortgage Observer: You were named David Twardock’s successor about a year ago now. How has that transition been going?

David Durning: The transition has gone well. It’s been busy, fun, active. The organization that we had, Dave had been building for a while, and given Dave’s style, my fingerprints were on it as well, as were others, and so I have a terrific team. So in that sense, we haven’t missed a beat in anything that we’re doing. For me, the interesting part of the challenge and the opportunity that something like this provides is to tell the PMCC story both externally and internally along the way.

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Mortgage Observer

Life Companies Are Back and Strategically Competing Against Big Banks. Here’s How.

By Matt Egan 11/27 2:00pm

Illustration by Thomas Pitilli.

It’s easy to see why life companies continue to plow money into commercial and multifamily real estate mortgages: They have provided strong returns, inflicted virtually no losses and match up perfectly with their long-term liabilities. 

“Mortgages have proven to be really good, solid investments for life companies,” said Robert Merck, head of real estate investors for MetLife, the top life insurer in this space and the subject of a longer profile in this month’s Mortgage Observer.

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Mortgage Observer

Willy Walker Keeps His Bets on Fannie and Freddie While Preparing to Branch Out

By Damian Ghigliotty 10/29 10:52am

Willy Walker, Chairman and CEO of Walker & Dunlop

Willy Walker, chairman and CEO of what the Mortgage Bankers Association ranked 2012’s 10th largest commercial real estate lender and third largest multifamily lender, has yet to shy away from a race in his professional and personal lives. With heightened competition for multifamily among other areas of commercial real estate lending and continued talk of winding down the GSEs, that determination may prove helpful going forward.

“When you compete with Wells Fargo and CBRE and PNC and Goldman Sachs and several other major players every single day, the competitive landscape can’t get any more competitive,” the 46-year-old executive told Mortgage Observer in his corner office in Bethesda, Md. “But there’s nothing out there right now that says to me we’re not going to be able to continue to grow and continue to be a very significant player in this space.”

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Mortgage Observer

Many Lenders Offering Low Rates for Multifamily

By Michael Stoler 3/27 1:00pm

indepth

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

Mortgage Observer

Fannie Mae Multifamily Head, Agency Vet Jeffery Hayward

By Alessia Pirolo 3/26 2:00pm

Jeffery Hayward.

When on the road, Jeffery Hayward often carries a personally customized guide, with the addresses of all the multifamily buildings that Fannie Mae has financed in the area. Then the head of the government-sponsored enterprise’s Multifamily Mortgage Business drives from building to building.

“I want to see what we are financing,” Mr. Hayward told The Mortgage Observer recently, during a series of meetings in his Washington, D.C. office. “I have actually walked a lot of the properties that we financed—I know what they look like, I have seen the tenants.” Read More

Mortgage Observer

New Jersey Lenders Locked in Competition for Multifamily Assignments

By Damian Ghigliotty 3/26 12:00pm

NJ Multifamily Harvest

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.

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the lead indicator

Can the Apartment Market Manage Without Fannie and Freddie?

By Sam Chandan 3/13 10:00am

chandan silo for web

The debate over housing finance reform has taken place largely behind closed doors, with public discourse limited to speculation. Since the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into effective insolvency in September 2008, the public has been shielded from serious discussion about their future. At least for the time being, weakness in the housing market has encouraged the status quo; policymakers have sidestepped the question of the government’s long-term role in shepherding homeownership outcomes. Read More

Mortgage Observer

Challenges at the Federal Housing Administration Were Forseen

By Sam Chandan 12/05/12 2:00pm

With few exceptions, news on the housing front has been overwhelmingly positive in recent months. In spite of weak employment trends, historically low mortgage rates and the plodding but inexorable rebalancing of supply and demand have combined to lift sales volumes, prices and perceptions of a housing recovery.

But a rising tide does not relegate housing to a lower rung on the policy ladder. As conditions improve, policymakers will be obliged to address the long-term role of government in promoting specific housing outcomes. Since the government embarked on the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more than four years ago, the immediate goal of resuscitating the housing market has taken precedence over the larger question of how policy goals have supported—and undermined—the sustainability of the sector. Read More

Mortgage Observer

Competition Hot in Multifamily

By Michael Stoler 9/06/12 3:36pm

indepth_web

Record-low mortgage rates have helped to fuel the nation’s refinancing activity for residential homes. In July, the number of mortgage applications filed hit a three-year high. Freddie Mac also reported that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.49 percent for the week ending July 26.

Likewise, attractive rates are fueling financing in the multifamily market, where financing for low-leveraged rental buildings has reached its lowest levels in decades. The result? Fierce competition among lenders looking to provide financing for the asset class, particularly in the Big Apple. Read More

Mortgage Observer

European Recession, the American Fiscal Cliff and Commercial Mortgage Lending

By Sam Chandan 6/28/12 2:00pm

Sam Chandan.

Europe stayed its most immediate existential threat when parties committed to the Hellenic bailout carried Greece’s mid-June election, the second in as many months. New Democracy eked out a slim plurality of votes for the Parliament of the Hellenes and, with the expected support of the smaller PASOK party, will hold to the austerity measures agreed in exchange for 240 billion euro (approximately $300 billion) in financial support since May 2010. Read More

Mortgage Observer

Outside Looking In: Strength of Manhattan Real Estate Market Draws New Lenders to Big Apple

By Daniel Geiger 6/27/12 2:00pm

Smaller banks are moving in on the NYC market.

Garrett Thelander, an executive at Massey Knakal who leads the company’s capital services group, was fielding offers for a financing deal he was recently arranging when he noticed many of the banks lining up to compete weren’t ones he was used to working with.

“There were a lot of players from out of town that you usually don’t see here that were competing and they were competing hard,” he said, describing it as a roughly $8 million deal for a commercial building that was owned by the building’s occupant.

People’s United, a Connecticut-based bank, wound up making the loan. Read More

Mortgage Observer

Capital One Grows, Minus Pains

By Carl Gaines 6/26/12 11:02am

Rick Lyon.

Capital One Bank has grown steadily since it was founded by current chairman, CEO and president Richard Fairbank in 1993. Along the way it grew from a mono-line credit card company funded through the capital markets into a more diversified entity with commercial and consumer banking. It managed to make Visigoths funny and capitalize on Alec Baldwin’s Words With Friends meltdown, while simultaneously deepening its reach into lines of business like commercial real estate.

The bank as a whole had $294.5 billion in loans outstanding and $216.5 billion in deposits as of March 31, 2012, according to its first quarter 2012 results. The commercial and multifamily real estate portion of this increased when comparing year-end results recently as well—rising to $15.4 billion for the period ended Dec. 31, 2011 from $13.4 billion the previous year. Read More