Taurus Gets $43M in Freddie Mac Debt for Tampa Multifamily Acquisition
By Matt Grossman August 19, 2019 4:18 pm
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A Boston-based private equity firm has scored a $43.1 million Freddie Mac mortgage from Berkadia to buy a large apartment complex in Tampa, Fla., Berkadia has announced.
The 10-year, floating-rate debt is set to fund Taurus Investment Management‘s acquisition of Mezzo at Tampa Palms, a garden-apartment development about 10 miles north of the city’s central business district. The loan now moves to Freddie Mac’s books for likely securitization in an upcoming multifamily mortgage bond.
“After over a third of the units were renovated, the property exemplified proven value-add potential and upside with the opportunity to further the asset’s value with additional capital improvements,” Mitch Sinberg, a Florida-based Berkadia executive, said in a statement. “The Tampa [area] also continues to outperform other job markets nationwide, making it a favorite for multifamily investors.”
Berkadia’s Matthew Robbins and Wesley Moczul worked with Sinberg to organize the loan.
The development, sold to Taurus by Preston Giuliano Capital Partners for $59 million, lies in Tampa Palms, a neighborhood that’s part of an expansive area north of the city that was annexed by Tampa in 1988. (The Tampa Bay Times first reported the transaction price.) The 27-year-old property, with 340 units, has a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments on a campus that includes swimming pools, a tennis court and a playground. The complex’s marketing materials do not include published rents.
Taurus teamed up with the same lending team for a similar deal in June, when the landlord obtained a Berkadia-originated Freddie Mac loan to buy another Tampa housing development called Lofton Place, about nine miles southwest. That property likewise included a mix of around 300 units on a landscaped campus.
The volume of Freddie Mac’s annual activity is capped by its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, but a handful of exceptions — like lending on eco-friendly property improvements or on targeted affordable housing — give the government-sponsored housing lender more room to maneuver. Through the first half of 2019, it generated $31.2 billion of new business, about 8 percent faster than its pace in the first six months of 2018. So far this year, a slightly smaller proportion of its deals have come from one of the cap-exempt lending areas, according to statistics that Freddie Mac published.
Berkadia is a lender under Freddie Mac’s Optigo network, a group of about 30 originators authorized to issue Freddie Mac multifamily loans.
Representatives for Taurus did not immediately respond to inquiries.
