Mr. Brickman told Mortgage Observer about the strength of the multifamily market, investors’ huge appetite for K-Deals and just how far things have come since the dark days of 2009. Read More
A proposed Senate bill that seeks to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the next five years, revealed last month, would preserve their multifamily lending businesses under a new entity and maintain a government guarantee for the multifamily lending market, commercial lenders and brokers told Mortgage Observer.
The bill, announced by Senators Tim Johnson and Mike Crapo on March 11, focuses on the dissolution of the firms’ single-family residential mortgage business, a market that the government-sponsored entities continue to dominate six years after the beginning of the financial crisis. It also creates a provision that would spin off the companies’ multifamily businesses and establish new independent businesses within a year of the bill’s passage. Read More
During last year’s Mortgage Bankers Association commercial real estate finance conference (CREF), Grace Huebscher, president of leading multifamily lender Beech Street Capital, found clarity on a topic she had been considering for some time—that staying ahead of the competition would require the support of a larger institutional partner. Capital One, Beech Street’s primary bank since 2010, had been on her radar, along with other top players in the finance arena. But prior to the annual event, Ms. Huebscher had felt that time was on her side.
A deeper sense of urgency set in as she listened to her peers speak about the challenges and changes ahead, from agency reductions to the return of the banking industry. That solidified a thought she and her partners had been entertaining for more than a year. Read More
Despite their surprisingly rapid recovery five years after being placed into government conservatorship, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be dissolved, if bi-partisan legislation announced today by the Senate banking committee eventually passes.
Under the bill, private capital would have to take the first 10 percent of all mortgage losses, effectively removing much of the firm federal backing that mortgage-backed securities repackaged by Fannie and Freddie have enjoyed. Read More
One of the many panels at the Mortgage Bankers Association‘s 2014 CREF/Multifamily Housing Convention & Expo in Orlando, Fla., focused on the buoyancy of the multifamily debt market with a forward look on what’s to come. Read More
Hello dedicated readers, industry insiders and commercial real estate junkies.
We are reaching out from the Mortgage Bankers Association‘s 2014 CREF/Multifamily Housing Convention & Expo in Orlando, Fla.
The four-day event kicked off last night at the Hyatt Regency Orlando hotel with several panels on the tumultuous FHA landscape and a lively Super Bowl party to cap off the night. (The Seattle Seahawks won their first Super Bowl title, defeating the Denver Broncos 43-8, for those who missed it.) Read More
Liquidity may well be on the rise in 2014.
As real estate and capital markets in many of the county’s largest cities continue to rebound, the majority of the top 50 commercial and multifamily lending firms expect loan origination volumes to increase this year, a recent Mortgage Bankers Association survey shows. Read More
Blackstone Mortgage Trust has named Paul Quinlan chief financial officer, replacing Geoffrey Jervis, who resigned to pursue other opportunities.
Mr. Quinlan, who most recently worked as head of financial planning and business development at Blackstone, will also now serve as CFO for the firm’s real estate debt strategies division. Read More
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.
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. Read More
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. 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
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
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. Read More
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
