James Abbee
Head of the Americas real estate financing group at Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs’ West Coast loan origination group, aided by a versatile lending platform, produced an active year amid a higher-for-longer interest rate climate.
Expanded product offerings added to Goldman Sachs’ traditional strength in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), including more balance sheet loans and smaller deals, provided a competitive advantage.
“We will always be laser-focused on growing our market-leading CMBS franchise across both conduit and SASB,” said James Abbee, who works out of the investment bank’s Dallas office. (SASB refers to single-borrower, single-asset loans.) “At the same time, we want to find ways to be more important to our clients and the market generally. This has resulted in us being much more active providing a variety of balance sheet solutions, from bridge loans to aggregation facilities and across a variety of loan sizes.”
Under Abbee, who was named a managing director in Goldman Sachs’ real estate financing group in 2021, the bank remained a force in the CMBS space across California. In March, Abbee’s team led a $475 million CMBS deal to refinance a portfolio of six West Coast offices, including 1601 Wilshire Boulevard and 12333 West Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Another notable CMBS deal from the group involved a $500 million refinance for Uber’s San Francisco headquarters in February. Goldman Sachs, along with Barclays, originated the five-year, fixed-rate, nonrecourse loan that was secured by two adjacent office properties 100 percent leased to Uber and next to Chase Center, the Golden State Warriors’ home arena.
Abbee noted that the CMBS market has displayed “relative stability” following a four- to six-week disruption from President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariffs announcement with spreads recently hovering around historical lows. He said the CMBS market has enabled opportunities for Goldman Sachs to lend against office properties while other lenders remain on the sidelines as the sector continues rebounding from the pandemic.
“Providing liquidity to the out-of-favor office space has created opportunities, and I feel like we have done a good job of being there for the market in those situations,” Abbee said.
