Meridian Closes First Agency Loan Since 2023 Ban With $173M Freddie Mac Deal

Meridian Capital Group is officially back in the agency financing game.

The brokerage giant closed a $173.1 million Freddie Mac-backed loan originated by NewPoint Real Estate Capital on behalf of investor Rubin Schron to refinance the Monterey luxury apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in a deal that closed Monday, Commercial Observer can first report.

The 10-year loan, which was arranged by Meridian’s Matt Texler, carries a 5.07 percent interest rate with eight years of interest-only payments and a 40-year amortization schedule. 

The deal marked the first agency deal for the firm since Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae placed restrictions on Meridian-brokered loans in November 2023 when a loan it negotiated was called into question.

“It shows to the market that we’re not just technically back in the agency market, we are really back in a big way, “ Meridian CEO Brian Brooks told CO in an interview last week. “It’s not just that somebody said we can do it, we are executing on it.” 

Brooks said it took about three months to “find the right deal,” and a sponsor who would be an ideal fit to announce a relaunch of Meridian’s agency-lending business. He said there were unknowns about whether agency debt would even be the right fit for the loan given the volatile market conditions early this year, but more recent market conditions allowed  Meridian to lock in an attractive interest rate for the financing.  

NewPoint and Schron did not immediately return requests for comment.

The transaction closed on the heels of Freddie Mac lifting its ban late last year and Fannie Mae easing restrictions in April. Meridian also implemented new underwriting procedures with a screening process for all brokeraged transactions to ensure compliance, and also formed a management credit approval committee to review large loans as part of its enhanced procedures to end the bans.

The improved processes for GSE loans was spearheaded by Brooks, a former acting controller of the currency and general counsel at Fannie Mae, who replaced founding Meridian CEO Ralph Herzka as CEO in March 2024. Brooks credited Melissa Martinez, who he hired in June 2024 from CoreLogic as the company’s first chief risk officer, with paving the way for the company’s agency brokering relaunch. 

“I brought her on because I’ve worked with her and known her for almost 20 years at this point. and she and I have done turnarounds together,”  Brooks said of Martinez. The two worked on OneWest Bank Group’s takeover of IndyMac 2009 when Brooks was vice chairman of the bank. 

“She was a huge chief player in this and is very respected by the agencies since she used to have the senior multifamily risk role at Fannie Mae years ago,” Brooks said. 

Brooks said Meridian will soon be arranging its first Fannie Mae deal since its suspension was lifted, and that the brokerage has several other agency transactions in the pipeline for 2025. He projects that by the end of the year Meridian will have executed around $500 million of agency loans.  

Meridian was greenlighted to work again with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae amid uncertainty about privatization of both GSEs after President Donald Trump’s appointment of private equity veteran Bill Pulte as chair of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.  

Ending the conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie for the first time since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis has the potential to open up more deal flow, according to Brooks, with the addition of private capital and without the restrictions of annual caps.

While Meridian’s half-a-billion dollars of projected agency volume this year pales in comparison to the roughly $10 billion the brokerage achieved in 2021, Brooks said it represents a strong signal of a return to a crucial part of its capital markets business.

“There’s a line in startup land where they talk about how zero to one is a lot harder than one to 10,” Brooks said. “This is our zero to one loan. We took a year in the penalty box, and now we’re out.  This our first goal, and once you’re scoring you’re scoring.” 

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com