At Over $60 Billion in Originations, Wells Fargo Again On Top
By Carl Gaines April 10, 2012 4:30 pm
reprintsThe Mortgage Bankers Association last week released its annual ranking of loan originations. The data is broken into several metrics—such as originations for third parties and originations by investor group. However, for several categories, including total originations, Wells Fargo (WFC) once again came out on top.
The bank’s commercial real estate originations for 2011 hit $60.2 billion, putting it way ahead of the other institutions in the top five. HFF came in at two on the list, with $20.6 billion, followed by Meridian Capital Group, CBRE (CBRE) Capital Markets and PNC Real Estate with $17.3 billion, $16.5 billion and $15.8 billion, respectively.
Alan Wiener, group head at Wells Fargo Multifamily Capital, told The Commercial Observer that the bank’s volume of originations in the New York City area for 2012 will continue apace.
“On the permanent side last year we did about $6.5 billion,” Mr. Wiener said. “We were the number one permanent multifamily lender in the country in 2010, 2011 and we will be in 2012 as well—so it’s a lot of real estate.”
On tap this year for Wells is the refinancing of 15,000 units at Coop City
Mr. Wiener pointed out that Wells has a hand in many large scale deals in the city, as administrative agent on syndicated loans such as the $530 million construction loan provided to the Gotham Organization for its development on the far west side.
“Generally our holds are much larger than anyone else’s,” Mr. Wiener explained. “So you will see us on most of the large deals.”
Life insurance companies remained strong with two showings in the top ten—MetLife Real Estate Investments originated $11 billion, which landed it in sixth place, and Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. landed at number eight, with $9.7 billion in originations.
For U.S. multi-housing agency originations from all sources CBRE Capital Markets came out on top in 2011, with over $8.7 billion in loan originations, $1.1 billion of which was done in conjunction with life insurance companies.
“In recent years, CBRE has built a strong and comprehensive Agency loan production platform, which has enabled us to capitalize on the healthy appetite for multi-housing property investment,” Brian Stoffers, president of CBRE Debt & Equity Finance said in a prepared statement about the results. “This robust platform has given us a distinct competitive advantage in serving the capital needs of investors targeting multi-housing opportunities.”
Part of that platform includes its Fannie Mae (FNMA) DUS program, which accounted for almost $1.6 billion in originations for 2011, the company said.
CGaines@observer.com
