In negotiating an income property loan, the size of loan the borrower can obtain is usually more of a sticking point than the rate or the loan fee.

Since income property loan sizes are generally limited by the debt service coverage ratio (i.e., cash flow), rather than the loan-to-value ratio, the operating expense figure that the lender uses in his calculations is critical.

Suppose a property has the following Pro Forma Operating Statement:

ABC APARTMENTS
1234 MAIN STREET
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

PRO FORMA OPERATING STATEMENT

Income:

Gross Scheduled Rents $100,000
Less 5% Vacancy & Collection Loss 5,000

Effective Gross Income: $ 95,000

Less Operating Expenses:

Real Estate Taxes $12,500
Insurance 2,550
Repairs & Maintenance 5,890
Utilities 7,345
Management 4,865
Fees & Licenses 987
Painting & Decorating 3,986
Reserves for Replacement 1,900

Total Operating Expenses: 40,023

Net Operating Income: $54,977

Then we hereby define the Operating Expense Ratio as follows:

Operating Expense Ratio = Total Operating Expenses divided by
the Effective Gross Income

Using our example above:

Operating Expense Ratio = $40,023 ÷ $95,000 = 42.1%

Appraisers and professional property managers often keep track of the operating expenses of the buildings they appraise or manage, and they publish their results. For example, the National Association of Realtors publishes the results of their surveys annually in several hardbound books including Income and Expenses Analysis-Apartments and Income and Expense Analysis Office Buildings.

Lenders have access to these type of publications, and they therefore are reluctant to accept at face value operating expenses supplied by the borrower when their operating expense ratios are less than those experienced by similar buildings in the area.

While it might be possible to operate an apartment building IN THE SHORT RUN at an operating expense ratio of less than 30 to 45%, in the LONG RUN, the end result will be a seriously deteriorated building.

It might be possible to get a lender to accept an operating expense ratio as low as 28% on a very new building, if it had fewer than 10 or so units, and if it had no pool and very little landscaping, and if you had authentic source documents to back up your claim. But in general, lenders will very seldom accept an operating expense ratio on apartments of less than 30 to 35%, and have been often known to use 40 to 45%.

The following are factors that will influence the lender to use a higher operating expense ratio:

1. Lack of individual metering of utilities
2. Swimming pool
3. Elevator
4. Extensive landscaping
5. Low income area and/or tenants
6. Presence of families with children

The larger the project, the larger the required operating ratio.  Large projects usually entail extensive recreational facilities and pools, and they often require full-time on-site management teams.

Operating expense ratios are not as useful in evaluating most commercial or industrial properties.  The reason why is because the space can be rented on a triple net basis, a net basis, or a full service basis.

Certain commercial properties, however, have surprisingly predictable operating expense ratios”

1. Self storage facilities:  25%
2. Mobile home parks:  25%
3. Non-flagged hotels and motels:  50%
4. Flagged hotels:  60%
5. Residential care homes:  85%  (food, nurses, etc.)

   If you are a commercial loan broker, and you are not calling every commercial real estate loan officer, working for a bank or credit union, within 20 miles of your office, you are missing out one of the biggest feasts in commercial real estate finance (“CREF”) in forty years.  Please grasp this concept:

   Almost every bank in the country is turning down almost every commercial loan request that it receives.  Helloooo?  What are they doing with these turndowns?

   These bankers would welcome anyone who could help them service their high-net-worth clients, especially since you will be taking the deals to a private money lender, like Blackburne & Sons, as opposed to a competing bank, which might steal their client.

By George Blackburne

A great many residential lenders make revolving lines of credit (home equity loans) on owner-occupied homes; so it it natural for lots of commercial loan brokers to ask if their investor clients can get a a line of credit, secured by an apartment building or an office building.

As a general rule, the answer is, “No.”  Commercial real estate lenders do not make lines of credit secured by investment real estate estate.  At least I have never seen or heard of it done in my 43 years in the commercial loan business.

Therefore, I was quite surprised to receive a newsletter from the fine folks at George Smith Partners – one of the oldest commercial mortgage banking firms in the country – that contained the following tombstone:

“George Smith Partners placed a structured senior and collateralized line of credit revolver in a cash-out execution for a business in Los Angeles. The first loan was structured to be self-liquidating over 15 years with a fixed rate of 3.90%. The $1,000,000 second trust deed is a true revolver that can be used as a check-book and has no limitations on uses.”

“The second loan is priced at 3.75% (Prime minus 1%).  Funds may be drawn down, re-paid and re-drawn without additional bank approval.  There is no non-utilization fee.  As the credit line is collateralized, there is no mandatory clean-up for funds outstanding over 12 months.”

A revolver is revolving line of credit that allows the borrower to borrow some dough, pay interest on it a for a few months, pay it off, allow the line of credit to rest for six weeks, borrow some more money, pay half of it back, paying interest on the outstanding balance monthly, and then pay off the remaining balance in full.

This particular revolver had no utilization fee.  In other words, the borrower does not pay a fee each time that he draws down on his line of credit.

There was no annual clean-up for funds outstanding over 12 months either.  Bank regulators require that unsecured lines of credit to be rested (paid down to zero) for at least thirty days every year.

In this case, because the revolver was well-secured by commercial real estate, the bank did not require an annual clean-up.

So where do you go to get a revolver on commercial real estate?  I dunno.  Until recently, I would have sworn that such lines of credit, secured by commercial real estate, were never made.

Apparently, however, such revolvers are occasionally being made.  But then some people swear there is a Santa Claus, and I have never seen him either.  Folks, revolvers are very, very, VERY rare; and they are no doubt reserved for commercial loans of least $5 million, made to borrowers with almost as much dough as Michael Bloomberg, who apparently is $500 million poorer these days.  Haha!

Article By George Blackburne

A company named JCR Capital sent me an email flyer several months ago advertising their equity capital for value-add real estate investments.

Value-add commercial real estate investments typically target properties that have in-place cash flow, but they seek to increase that cash flow over time by making improvements to, or repositioning, the property.  In other words, the property has tenants, but they are paying substantially below the potential rent that the property could be getting.

In a value-add investment deal, the transaction’s sponsor makes an active effort to elevate the income stream of the property, typically through a significant capital improvement program, such as a partial or property-wide renovation.  Examples of such improvements might include new paint, new signage, renovating the lobby, and improving the security of the property and the parking area, etc.

In their marketing flyer, JCR Capital advertised preferred equity, joint venture equity, and programmatic equity.  Programmatic equity?  What the heck is programmatic equity?

Before we get into programmatic equity, lets first do a quick review of the term, “equity”.  Equity is not just the difference between what your house is worth and the balance on your first mortgage.

Equity – in the context of real estate – is the money that the owner stands to lose before “the bank” loses its first penny.  Obviously, “the bank” could also mean a credit union, a life company, a conduit, or any other type of real estate lender.

Equity is often referred to as the first-loss piece.  If anyone is going to lose any money on a real estate deal, the first guy to lose a chunk out of his tush is the equity holder (the owner).

Example:

ABC Development Company specializes in turning around big apartment projects that have become run down.  In downtown Washington, DC, ABC Development learns of a 360-unit apartment project within two miles of Capital Hill.  The well-located apartment project was once filled with ambitious, young political staffers; but when the old man died, and his wife took over the management, the condition of the property and the rents plummeted.

ABC Development can acquire the property for just $32 million, but the renovation costs are another $9 million.  With an interest reserve and the other necessary soft costs, the total project cost is $46 million.  The bank, with whom ABC Development has a relationship, will only loan up to 70% of the total cost because the project has become a big drug house and a gang hang-out.

A huge renovation project like this needs to be structured like a construction loan.  Who remembers the four elements of Total Cost?  Of course, there is the land cost (in this case, the cost of the land and the building), and then there are the hard costs (bricks and mortar).  What else?  Soft Costs – that’s right!  Good job.

But you are still forgetting the fourth element of Total Cost (of a development project). It’s the contingency reserve.  A good rule of thumb when computing the contingency reserve is to use 5% of hard costs and soft costs.  Why not 5% of the land cost?  Because by then the developer already knows the cost of the land.  There is NOT going to be a cost overrun in connection with the land.

Therefore the total cost of a development project is the land cost, plus the hard costs, plus the soft costs (interest reserve, architectural fees, engineering fees, points, closing costs, etc.), plus the contingency reserve.

Okay, now let’s get back to ABC Development’s big value-add deal.  We said the total cost was $46 million, and the bank was willing to lend $32.2 million – which is 70% of the total cost.  Therefore ABC Development will need to contribute $13.8 million.  The development company has $3.8 million to contribute, so it will need an equity provider willing to put up the remaining $10 million.

This is the type of value-add deal that would be perfect for the nice folks at JCR Capital.  Their transaction sizes include equity contributions of between $5 million and $50 million nationwide.  (We are talking large deal sizes here, folks.  The property should at least be worth $20MM.)

Okay, But What the Heck is Programmatic Equity?

As Sam explained to me, “Programmatic equity is where we provide a facility of capital, say $25 million to $50 million of committed capital, for a particular strategy that a sponsor is pursuing.”

Example:

Let’s suppose that a developer specializes in buying large, older, mobile home parks, and then the developer repaves all of the streets, tears out the landscaping and puts in far-nicer lawns and bushes, puts in a new pool and a new clubhouse, enforces the park rules about skirts and storage sheds, squeezes out the mobile homes being used as rentals, squeezes out the ugly and/or single-wide coaches, and then dramatically raises the rent.

When everything is stabilized, the developer then sells the mobile home park to a REIT.  This is his program.  He has flipped four parks already, and he has identified fifteen other parks in need of his program.  He needs just $3 million in equity to satisfy each bridge lender providing the underlying first mortgage, but in order to renovate all fifteen parks, he might eventually need a total of $45 million in equity.

A provider offering programmatic equity might go all the way down to just $3 million on each mobile home park because the sponsor will be doing 15 of these projects.   The provider might offer the developer a capital facility (kind of like a line of credit) of $30 million in equity to start renovating these large, old, mobile home parks.

By George Blackburne

Last week I wrote a blog about how historically aggressive private money commercial bridge lenders are getting.  This month George Smith Partners, the big commercial mortgage banking company (the original founder started George Smith & Company decades before I founded Blackburne & Sons forty years ago) released a newsletter, FinFacts, containing the following tombstone:

“George Smith Partners (“GS P”) placed a $10,900,000 non-recourse loan for the refinance of an underperforming stabilized 50-unit multifamily community in Los Angeles.  The Sponsor recently acquired the asset at approximately 50% below market from an affiliate party, and GSP was able to facilitate approximately $3,000,000in cash out proceeds at closing.”

“A portion of the loan proceeds will be used to renovate units as they become vacant in order to achieve current market rents.  GSP identified a non-institutional lender (private money lender) who was comfortable with the cash out proceeds and who understood the history and dynamics of this non-arms-length acquisition.  The non-recourse loan is fixed for 1.5 years with a 7.99% interest rate and 4.99% pay rate.”

Terms:

Interest Rate:  7.99% with 4.99% pay rate
Term:  18 months
LTV:  70%
Recourse:  Carve-Outs Only
Fees:  1.0%
Prepayment:  None; no exit fee

The reason I brought this closing to your attention is because the Big Girls (the originator of this commercial loan at GSP was a lady) are arranging large commercial bridge loans with less than interest-only payments.

Article Provided By By George Blackburne

Nearly a decade ago, there was a foreclosure crisis. Realtors were buying old houses and flipping them. Now, the strategy is to buy new and rent out. This new asset class that is taking the private equity market by storm. It started in Arizona, spread to the Sunbelt, and is now spreading across the country.

This new real estate asset class; a class of real estate that competes with apartment buildings, office buildings, and shopping centers; is the build-to-rent community (“B2R”).  A build-to-rent community is a tract of brand new single-family homes that is constructed, not to be sold, but rather to be rented out to residential tenants.  The tract of, say, 60 homes, is then professionally managed and sold to an institutional investor as a reliable source of income.

My friends at George Smith Partners recently published the following tombstone:

George Smith Partners successfully advised on $12,000,000 in joint venture equity financing and $23,900,000 in non-recourse senior construction financing for the ground-up development of a 185-home build-to-rent community.  Single-family-for-rent communities are a newer asset class and this project was among the first in the market.  These communities offer the experience of living in a single-family home with the ease and cost of living in an apartment building.

The Sponsor expects the project to be well received as there are distinct competitive advantages over the existing apartment product in the market place for several reasons including the new construction, low density and both interior and exterior privacy.

Institutional real estate investors absolutely love this new class of real estate.  The homes in B2R communities usually rent at significant premiums anywhere from 15% to 30% above equivalent-size apartments or single-family rental homes, located in traditional for-sale neighborhoods.

B2R communities typically lease three to five times faster than traditional multifamily housing.  Developers report strong pre-lease periods, often ending up with a waiting list.  Typically all of the homes are rented in three to four months, versus ten to fourteen months for multifamily.

Another reason institutional investors love B2R communities is because the homes are brand new.  Because these home are brand new, they are usually immune from some of the typical repair factors that come in at 15 or 20 years of ownership.  There is a general contractor warranty.  There is also a limited product warranty of the appliances.  The only major operating expense for landlords is the landscaping.

Rents for single-family homes are growing fast at 4.5% annually now, compared with 3% rent growth for multifamily apartments.  There is also much less turnover in single-family rentals, and the rental market is much less volatile than the home sales market.  People will always need a place to live.

Renters are also digging these new B2R communities.  The huge millennial generation is aging into marriage and parenthood.  Not all of them want, or can afford, to buy a home.

Most of these B2R communities are pet-friendly and include a resort-style pool and spa, a covered ramada, walking paths, optional garages, and an electric-charging station.  They often offer the highest available Internet speeds.  The pool, exercise facilities, and planned social activities bring residents together, which doesn’t always happen in apartment buildings.  The homes often offer keyless entry and tablet-controlled security, climate control, and entertainment systems.  There are sometimes even smart front gates at the communities.

Institutional investors are learning that there is a cultural move away from your typical garden apartment with elevators, swimming pools, tennis courts and common areas. Homeownership is looking less desirable to some, particularly in the affordable arena, and renters now have a chance, for very close to the same price, to rent a three-bedroom, two-bath or a four-bedroom, three-bath home that they can call their own.

The renters obviously don’t own their home, but as long as they pay their rent and behave like good neighbors, they can reasonably expect to live there for twenty years.  The stigma associated with renting, along with the historical drive toward homeownership, is waning.

The American Dream is changing.  The last recession hurt a lot of people, and homeownership is at a 20-year low.  Most single-family renters fall into one of two categories:  Baby Boomers who are downsizing and Millennials.

Millennials are often saddled with large amounts of student-loan debt, and they either can’t or won’t buy a home.  Renting affords them a more mobile lifestyle.  The same goes for Boomers, many of whom lost their homes to foreclosure during the recession and are gun-shy about purchasing another.

B2R communities satisfy these renters’ need for a single-family home, and the landlord takes care of the exterior maintenance to boot.  It’s a unique lock-and-leave, managed experience more akin to the apartment world, with detached-home benefits.

Renting a detached home is attractive for many of the same reasons as renting an apartment: the portability/flexibility of a lease, no exterior maintenance, and no mortgage debt.  A single-family home offers more space and privacy, with a backyard, attached garage, and other features not available in multifamily housing.  I read where one developer of B2R communities automatically puts a dog door in every home.  Smart.

Multifamily is vertical, with neighbors above and below you, and it’s noisy.  With single-family homes, you have none of those acoustical issues.

There is a veritable ocean of capital now seeking B2R communities.  Consumer rental demand that is driving these institutions to want much greater levels of inventory of this product.  Institutional investors are learning that new B2R communities are a very safe product.

“I’ve got clients, multiple, well over a couple billion dollars worth of capital looking to place in this space,” said a new Phoenix-based commercial brokerage firm focused on single family rental and build-to-rent investment portfolios.   They are looking to acquire 5-6,000 homes in the next two years.”

Toll Brothers, a luxury homebuilder, recently announced its commitment to invest $60 million in a $400 million venture that will build homes specifically for rent in seven major U.S. cities.

Lennar, the nation’s largest homebuilder by revenue, experimented with a build-to-rent community in Sparks, Nevada, and announced in July its plans to move further into the space.

Clayton Homes, the 15th largest site-builder and home manufacturer, also recently revealed its build-for-rent home communities, to be built within its market.

By George Blackburne

This is the perfect time to talk about the “quality” of income. Real estate crashes seem to strike about every ten to fourteen years, and it has been thirteen years since the Great Recession. If we were to have another commercial real estate crash, would you rather own a building leased to Betty’s Gift Shop or one leased to Amazon.com?

The quality of income refers to the likelihood that you are going to receive it.  All money is green, whether it comes from the headquarters of the Catholic Church in America or from Boom-Boom’s Place, LLC, a chain of gentlemen’s clubs in southern Louisiana.

But is it likely that Boom-Boom’s Place may have a little trouble making its rent payments or its mortgage loan payments if the economy completely tanks?  Guys are less likely to be drinking five beers a night and spending $30 on tips to the dancers if they are out of work.

Okay, obviously, we would rather be on the receiving end of $7,000 per month from Amazon.com than from Betty’s Gift Shop; but in order to win that deal, we have to make some sacrifices.

Amazon.com, Inc. signs a lease for a small industrial building, perhaps used to repair its delivery trucks.  Upon the execution (signing) of the lease, the owners of the little industrial building offers the property for sale.

Now normal industrial buildings in Portland are selling at, say, 6.5% cap rates.  In other words, if an investor paid all cash for a garden-vareity industrial building in Portland, he could expect to earn, after paying all expenses and setting aside a little money every year to eventually replace the roof and the HVAC system in 12 years, a return on his money of around 6.5%.

A cap rate is just the return on your money if you paid all cash for a commercial building.

Wake up, folks! The money in this industry is in loan servicing fees!

Before computing that return on your money, always remember that you need to set aside a little money every year to replace the roof and the HVAC system.  This is called the replacement reserve.

Okay, so the seller has a building leased to Amazon.com for $7,000 per month.  Your accountant tells you that you need to set aside $850 per month to eventually replace the roof, repave the parking lot, and replace the HVAC system.  So the investment is scheduled to yield $6,150 per month.

Since industrial buildings in Portland typically sell at a 6.5% cap rate, you compute the value as follows:  Six-thousand-one-hundred-fifty dollars per month times twelve months suggests an annual net operating income (“NOI”) of $73,800.

If you divide the annual net operating income (NOI) by the proper cap rate (expressed as a decimal), you get its value.

Okay, so $73,800 divided by .065 (6.5% expressed as decimal) equals a value $1.14 million.  Therefore you submit your offer of $1.14 million.  The selling broker falls out of his chair laughing.  What the heck?

“George,” he says, “Betty’s Gift Shop might sell for $1.14 million (a 6.5% cap rate), but this is Amazon.com!  The world could be in complete chaos, yet a buyer could absolutely depend on Amazon making its rent payments.  There are investors out there who need the security of predictable payments, and they will pay far extra to buy that stream of predictable payments.”

“George, I have offers on this building of $1.5 million, $1.72 million, and finally $1.85 million.  That works out to a 4% cap rate.”

When a real estate and stock market crash is coming, it’s all about the quality of the income.

By George Blackburne

Wow.  If you walked into the executive offices of some savings and loan associations in the early 1980’s, the wealth and opulence would have amazed you – walls paneled with expensive oak, glistening marble floors imported from Italy, and genuine crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.  On the walls you would often find wildly-expensive oil paintings created by the great masters.

If invited, you might dine in the executive dining room, where highly-paid chefs would treat you to a masterpiece of culinary delight.  The President of the S&L might even fly in on the corporate jet to meet you.  And hence came the famous expression…

In other words, if the president of a publicly-traded S&L started spending money like a drunken sailor, dump your stock.  The orgy of excess spending all came crashing down just a few years later, when this lavish spending and some reckless underwriting caught up to the S&L’s.  But how did we get here?

From the year 1933, which represented the bottom of the Great Depression, until the year 1986, Federal Reserve Regulation Q limited the interest rate that banks and S&L’s could pay on time deposits (CD’s).

In other words, suppose you owned a bank, and your bank desperately needed more deposits.  The other banks in town were paying just 2.0% on C.D.’s, but you were willing to pay 2.5% interest to your depositors.

Guess what?  You couldn’t do it.  Regulation Q limited you to just 2.0%.  Your bank was not legally allowed to offer 2.5%.  In order to compete, banks offered free toasters or free transistor radios in order to attract depositors.

Then in 1986, Federal regulators relaxed Regulation Q.  As long as your bank was healthy, you could offer whatever interest rate you wanted in order to attract new deposits.

Suddenly, wealthy real estate developers were opening their own banks and S&L’s.  Hot money was quickly being moved from bank to bank, as certificates of deposit matured.  Whichever bank or S&L in the entire country was offering the highest interest rate would get these fast-moving deposits.  After all, the deposits were insured by the Federal government.  It didn’t matter which bank a depositor chose.

But as interest rates on bank certificates of deposit increased, it became increasingly difficult for a bank or an S&L to make a profit.  There was a practical limit as to how high of an interest rate an S&L could charge for a mortgage loan.

To make matters worse, the bleeding heart California Supreme Court, in an infamous decision known as Wallenkamp v. Bank of America, had ruled in 1980 that a due-on-sale clause in a mortgage was unenforceable.  Other states soon followed suit.

Prior to this boneheaded decision, a bank could make a 30-year home mortgage at a fixed rate of, say, 3.5%, knowing that the vast majority of homeowners would move and sell their house every seven years.  When they sold their homes, the mortgage would have to be paid off.  If interest rates crept up to 4.25%, it was not the end of the world for the bank because the loan would almost certainly be paid off in just a few years.

As interest rates on both C.D.’s and mortgages marched upwards due to raging inflation, banks and S&L’s soon found themselves actually losing money on the older fixed-rate mortgages in their portfolio.  They might be forced by inflation and competition to pay 6% on deposits, while earning just 3.5% on a mortgage loan that potentially could stay on the books for the next 30 more years!

Banks did not suffer as badly as savings and loan associations.  Banks always wrote fewer mortgage loans than S&L’s.  Banks, in those days, also priced many of their business loans at 2% over prime.  As the prime rate marched ever upwards, so did the interest rate charged to their borrowers.

But S&L were only allowed by charter at the time to make mortgage loans, not business loans.  These mortgage loans were almost universally fixed rate loans.  The fixed rate on the mortgages in the portfolio of an S&L soon became too low for most S&L’s to make a profit.  Remember, the prime rate reached 21.5% in 1981, as inflation approached 16% annually.

The Explosion of Construction Lending:

Savings and loan associations therefore became desperate to earn more income.  They found this additional income in the form of construction loans.

Construction loans, assuming the project goes well, are very profitable for a bank or an S&L.  The bank gets to earn its two-point loan origination fee (competition has since forced this typical loan origination fee down to just one modernly) on the entire loan amount, but in the early months, the bank has only a tiny fraction of the loan outstanding.   Cha-ching.  This works out to a huge yield for the bank.

In addition, construction loans are short term.  Banks greatly prefer short term loans because they can get their money back and then go into turtle mode if they see a recession coming.

Therefore, in the early 1980’s, commercial construction lending went wild.  The skylines of every football team city in the country were lined with huge construction cranes, as huge office towers and hotel towers climbed towards the heavens.

The Savings and Loan Crisis:

Then the government changed the tax law.  No longer could depreciation losses be used to shelter the incomes of the rich and of high-income earners, like physicians.  They began to dump, and even walk away from, their commercial real estate holdings.  Prices plummeted by 45%.

At the same time, the price of oil also plummeted.  Oil-producing regions like Texas and Colorado saw their incomes shrivel and their office buildings soon emptied.  The era of see-through buildings had arrived.

A see-through building was typically an office tower with no tenants and no tenant improvements.  Because the building was just an empty shell, you could literally look in one window and see the seagulls flying outside of the far windows.

The S&L’s Crisis rolled across the country, starting in the East first, reaching Texas 18- months later, and finally reaching California 18-months after that.  The crisis came to a head and resulted in the failure of 1,043 out of 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States between 1986 and 1995.

The rest is history.

By George Blackburne

When underwriting commercial loans, commercial lenders need to be very careful about properties that are leased out for far more than their fair market value.  A story will make this clear.

GrandpaJack was a brilliant man.  He was also a darned fool.   Forty-five years ago, he spotted the fact that Silicon Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula was inching southward towards the cheaper land in San Jose.

Grandpa Jack therefore bought a large, vacant lot on the corner of First Street and Trimble Road, where it approached Milpitas, figuring it would be great location someday for R&D and flex space.

Thirty years later, the world was beating a path to his doorstep, begging to build and lease back a 200,000 square foot high-tech manufacturing facility.  Anxious to provide for his family for several generations into the future, Grandpa Jack leased the entire facility in 2004 to Oracle Corporation for a flat fee of $1.92 million per year ($9.6 per square foot per year).

When discussing commercial lease rates, it is customary to always speak in terms of rent per square foot per year.

Judging by his vision, Grandpa Jack was brilliant.  Judging by his choice of Oracle as his tenant, Grandpa Jack showed even more brilliance.  Oracle Corporation, the financial behemoth, sailed comfortably through the Great Recession.  Grandpa Jack’s three children got every single rent payment on time.

First a correction.  A few days ago, I wrote a blog article about how deflation is sweeping the world.  In that article, I mentioned that deposit rates in Germany are slightly positive.  I am pretty sure that this statement was wrong.

Listening to Bloomberg today, I just discovered that the yield on ten-yield German bunds is a negative 0.46%.  The world is deflating so fast that this yield fell by a full 0.02% in a single day.  That’s a pretty big move.  No wonder the Fed is trying to get ahead of deflation in America.

Another Great Recession might be on point.  The mainstream business media picked up the same theme on Thursday and Friday, as the Dow lost ground. There will be some severe economic consequences from the coronavirus.

Even if COVID-19 never gets out of control in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of small businesses in China are in serious trouble, especially with tens of millions of their workers confined to their homes.  The owners of most small businesses in China have no more than four months worth of operating expenses in savings, and small businesses employ 60% of China’s workers.

And the thing is, many of these small Chinese companies manufacture parts for American companies.  As a result, the worldwide supply chain has been shaken.  We can’t manufacture our own high-value goods without many essential parts coming from China.  Container ships coming in from China are coming back only 25% full.

Clusters of COVID-19 are now out of control in South Korea (602 cases, 3 deaths), Japan (135 cases, not counting cruise ships), Italy (132 cases), and Iran (43 cases, 8th deaths).  A worldwide pandemic is a virtual certainty.

I am writing this article on Sunday afternoon.  It will be interesting to see if the U.S. stock market get hammered on Monday.

Now on today’s training in commercial real estate finance.

In this week’s FinFacts, a superb, free publication of George Smith Partners, one partner, after returning from this year’s Mortgage Bankers Association Commercial Real Estate Finance (“CREF”) Conference, wrote about the competitiveness of bridge lenders:

“Bridge Lenders:  Floating rate bridge loan spreads used to be stratified, ranging from 2% to 6% over LIBOR, depending on the transaction dynamics.  That’s so 2017 (the old days).  Now there’s a race to the bottom occurring, with lenders bunched up at 2% to 4% over LIBOR.  More and more of them are pushing to the bottom of that range.”

“So how do lenders differentiate themselves?  Deal structure, credit officers are casting a wider net (One lender even remarked: We will do some funky stuff), source of capital (mortgage REIT vs CLO execution vs leveraged debt fund), flexibility, certainty of execution (we met with senior committee members that stressed their lean and efficient approval process), and borrower costs (exit fees can be waived).” and increased leverage.  Lenders are more willing to listen to stories.  For  example:  We will look at heavier risk for strong sponsors.”

“Also, more heavy bridge loans (major renovation, unoccupied properties) are being priced almost like light bridge.  As one lender remarked: No cash flow, no problem, for the right deal.  Geographic:  Secondary and tertiary markets are being considered, and the right deals are being priced tightly.  Yet many high-yield lenders are still in business, now offering high-leverage, non-recourse construction loans or going very high up the capital stack.  The net needs to widen as nearly every lender indicated that their marching orders are to increase production over 2019.”

Okay, so what on earth is the difference between a heavy commercial bridge loan and a light commercial bridge loan? A light bridge loan is where there is only some minor renovation and/or the property is a proven location.  You may be able to negotiate a bridge loan at just LIBOR plus 2.0% or LIBOR plus 3.0%.

Examples of Light Bridge Loans:

1. You just found a good tenant for your standing office building, but you need $350,000 to pay for tenant improvements.
2. Your borrower’s restaurant has been a money-maker for 20 years (proven location), and the borrower needs another $1 million to expand his seating capacity by another 35 tables.

A heavy bridge loan is one involving substantial construction and/or market risk.  If you can even find an interested bridge lender, you may have to pay as much as LIBOR plus 4% or even higher.

1. 1. You are converting an old hotel to student housing.  All kinds of problems happen when you open the walls of older buildings (termites, asbestos, illegal wiring and/or substandard plumbing).
   2. You need $1.5 million to convert an existing, vacant retail building to a restaurant, and there is no guarantee that the market will appreciate a restaurant in this particular location.  Maybe the people located in the surrounding area don’t make enough dough to dine out often.  Maybe the new restaurant has inadequate parking or is hard to negotiate by car.  We have all seen restaurant after restaurant fail in the same location.
   3. You are converting the shell of a failed big box retail store to self storage, a popular adaptive re-use.  That’s more than a trifling of construction, plus you have risk that people don’t like two-story self-storage buildings.

P.S.  I wonder if the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”) will survive this crisis.  The average Chinese citizen despises the tight control of the CCP, but they tolerate it because the CCP has been improving their lives annually.

What happens when the growth rate in China plummets from 6% to 7% annually to a negative number?  The largely-peaceful protestors in Hong Kong taught the Chinese people how to bring a government to its knees.  Think this is a far-fetched scenario?  Everyone was shocked at the speed at which the Russian Communist Party lost power.  Could beautiful young Chinese girls soon be sticking flowers into the gun barrels of surrounding Chinese soldiers?

Most of you are too young to remember this, but when Russian soldiers and tanks surrounded the Russian pro-democracy protestors in 1991, led by Boris Yeltsin, some beautiful Russian girl started sticked flowers in to the gun barrels of the Russian soldiers.  In less than an hour, the surrounding Russian army brigade changed sides and pointed their guns outwards, protecting the protestors.

Boys are so easy.  🙂

By George Blackburne

Now that I have mentioned it, you will start to hear the term, Modern Monetary Theory, all of time.  The commentators use it a lot on Bloomberg, CNBC, and Fox Business.  The financial commentators will often just use the acronym, “MMT”.

According to Wikipedia, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a macroeconomic framework that says monetarily sovereign governments should sustain higher deficits and print as much money as needed because they do not need to worry about insolvency, and inflation is a distant possibility.

The key to MMT is that the sovereign government borrows in its own currency, pays it back in its own currency, and controls the printing press to print more of its own currency.  Countries in the European Union – France, Spain, Italy, and Greece – are examples of sovereign governments that do NOT have this option.  They use the Euro, which is a currency that they don’t control.

Interesting note:

Since I started this article, Boris Johnson and his conservatives won a landslide victory in the United Kingdom.  The U.K. will be leaving the European Union (Brexit) on January 15th.  The pound has soared!  Apparently investors think that the Brits are going to do better financially without Europe.

The Japanese, in contrast to EU members, can borrow in yen and repay their debt in yen.  If the debt service on Japan’s debt, denominated in yen, becomes unbearable, Japan can simply print hundreds of trillions of yen, buy back their own debt, and retire it permanently.

In other words, as long as inflation remains tame, the U.S. should go ahead and pass a $1.5 trillion infrastructure spending plan, even if the deficit soars to $2.5 trillion annually.  We spend the money to repair our bridges and upgrade our airports.  Then we take another look at inflation.

If inflation is still tame, we could increase military spending by another $1 trillion and bolster our missile forces, bolster our missile defense forces, and greatly expand our Space Force.

I read a military journal article this morning where one of our leading air force generals (just forced into retirement) begged the country to prepare for war in space.  China is already working on a space mothership (think of it as an aircraft carrier in space – see the picture above) from which attack space ships will fly out to destroy our constellation of satellites.  “… and you don’t believe we’re on the Eve of Destruction?”  (Famous hippie song from the 1960’s.)

So go ahead and spend that $1 trillion on defense and then take another look at the inflation rate.  Has inflation increased from 1.75% to 4.5%?   In that case, maybe the country dials back on any extra MMT spending.

Is it a good idea?  I am convinced that a world war is coming, so I am all for it.  If we can spend enough in space and on missiles, maybe China won’t attack us.  I’ll gladly live with some inflation, if that means that my precious kids (and now grandkids) get to live.

But absent a war, is it a good idea?  If Trump died and made me king, I would use the power of the printing press to buy up many of the nicest apartment buildings, office buildings, and shopping centers in Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, Seoul, Ho Chi Min City, Bangkok, and Manilla.  I would intentionally devalue the dollar to make our manufacturing companies more competitive.  In the process, the rents from those trophy properties would be sweet.

But you know that’s not what is going to happen.  Opportunists like Andrew Yang are going to promise to give away $1,000 per month to every American voter, in order to rise to power.  We are going to teach our people – instead of working hard to advance themselves – to stay home all day, take drugs, and play video games.

In the words of Alexander Fraser Tytler, the famous Scottish historian, in 1807:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.  The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:  From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”

He made this famous observation way back in 1807.  Our 200 years of power are long past.  Hail Chairman For Life, Xi Jinping!  It’s important to get in good graces with our future rulers early.  Haha!

By George Blackburne

Wrap your head around the concept that every business owner in the entire country needs cash right now.  His bank is definitely not going to loan it to him.  Banks today are terrified.  Here is exactly how to find some small commercial real estate loans during this Coronavirus Crisis.

I want to emphasis the word, “small” commercial loans.  Small commercial loans close.  Commercial loans larger than $1.5 million have a closing rate that is 1/20th of smaller deals.  One-twentieth (1/20th)!  You are foolish to work on commercial loans larger than $1.5 million right now, when every large commercial lender in the country is hunkered down in his bunker.

Go to Google Maps and type in the address of your office.  You will notice on the map a number of businesses plotted close to your office.  Ignore the big businesses, like the huge car dealerships and the huge national banks, like Chase.

Then call them up and ask to speak with the owner.  At first the receptionist might try to protect him from you, thinking that you are a salesman.  Explain to her that your company loans money to businesses, and right now her boss’ business almost certainly needs money.  You might also mention that you are located right around the corner from her boss’ business.

Perhaps the first time you will be sent to voicemail, but that’s okay.  Make your pitch and leave your phone and email address.  You might call the receptionist back and explain that you left your name and number on his voicemail; but if she will please give you her boss’ name and email address, you can send him more information about a coronavirus business support loan.

I just invented that term tonight.  Sounds pretty good, huh?  A coronavirus business support loan.  If the receptionist fights you, you might politely remind her that her job might depend of her boss getting some business support cash right now.

Instead, focus on the small restaurants, the mobile home parks, the auto repair shops, the hairdressers, the RV parks, and the little retail shops.

Now the first time you reach out to the boss of the auto repair shop, he might not respond.  Keep leaving messages.  Make a call list, and try to call thirty small, nearby businesses every day.  Explain that your mortgage company is located right just down the street, but that you are working from home right now due to the crisis.

Send the business owner a new email every four days, personally addressed and referencing his particular business.  “Hey, Steve, this is Don from Jackson Mortgage, right around the block from you.  I drive by your auto repair shop there on Madison Avenue almost every day.  You must need cash right now, and I may be able to help.”

As the days go by, slide left and right on Google Maps to find even more businesses to solicit.  It is important that your potential customers – and their receptionists – understand that you are located very close to them.  You are not some call center located in the Philippines.

When you get a deal, please do NOT call or email me.  I’m retired.  Phew!  Stressful times.  Haha!  Instead, please call Alicia Gandy, our largest commercial loan originator, at 916-338-3232 x 310.  We call Alicia our Loan Goddess.  Yes, she’s that good.  You can also call my wonderful, first-born son, George Blackburne IV, at 916-338-3232 x 314.

Remember, because you know Blackburne & Sons, you know one of the only conventional commercial lenders in the entire country still making commercial real estate loans.  We just closed a $1.65 million commercial loan on a hotel in the heartland on Friday.

Final lesson:  Alicia Gandy – we call her our Loan Goddess – will be absolutely killing it over the next two years.  Her fastest and best service will go to those commercial loan brokers who brought her deals when the market was saturated with competing hard money mortgage funds.  These loyal commercial loan brokers have a relationship with her.

Those competing hard money mortgage funds are all gone now – along with the dinosaurs and the dodo birds.  Going forward, you also need to develop a relationship with Alicia and George IV, so they will be especially loyal to you when the proverbial stuff hits the fan.

Remember, Blackburne & Sons put together a fresh syndicate* of wealthy private mortgage investors on every deal.  There are always savvy investors willing to invest when blood is running in the streets.  It’s just a matter of price (interest rate).  Therefore, we were able to stay in the market every single day of the S&L Crisis, the Dot-Com Meltdown, and the Great Recession.

We are a small family company, and only a handful of brokers know us.  That’s huge for you!  So get out there and feast.  Every business owner in America needs money right now.

Hard money mortgage funds rely on fresh deposits to make new loans.  When the financial markets are in turmoil, not only do new deposits dry up, but existing investors line up to withdraw.

Remember, every business owner in America needs money right now.

Are any of you guys savvy stock pickers?  If so, you might want to consider shorting those companies which provide services to the construction industry.  For example, those companies that manufacture, deliver, and/or set up huge construction cranes are likely to face some tough years ahead.

Why?  There may be very little new commercial construction – apartments, office buildings, shopping centers, residential subdivisions – over the next three years.

The reason why is because the banks have stopped making new commercial construction loans.  Banks are terrified right now, and the first thing that banks do when they get scared is to stop all commercial real estate lending.

This lending freeze is especially true of commercial construction loans.  I have lived through three commercial real estate crashes in my forty years in commercial real estate finance (“CREF”) – the S&L Crisis, the Dot-Com Meltdown, and the Great Recession.  Each time commercial real estate declined by almost exactly 45%.  Remember that number – 45%.  Commercial real estate may decline by 45% again as a result of this Coronavirus Crisis.*

It’s almost like a game of musical chairs.  Whichever banks are caught with construction loans outstanding are the ones that take the largest losses during the commercial real estate crashes that seem to happen about once every twelve years.

It is important to grasp the concept that local commercial banks make 95% of all commercial construction loans.  Construction loans are are funded gradually, as the work progresses.  If you just gave a developer $5 million to build an apartment building, he’s likely to skip the country, along with Lola La Boom-Boom, to some sunny beach to South America.

Because Lola looks awfully good in a string bikini, we simply cannot trust Don Developer with all of the money at once.  Instead, the proceeds of the construction loan are paid directly to Don’s subcontractors, and they are paid only after the subcontractors have correctly completed their work.  The bank has to sign off on this work too, after it has made a progress inspection.  A progress inspection is a quick inspection by a bank employee to verify that certain construction work has been properly completed.

Every ten or fifteen days the bank has to send a loan officer out to the construction site to take a look at the progress of construction.  The subcontractors will be clamoring to get paid.  Some huge New York bank, for example, couldn’t possibly fly a loan officer all the way out to Phoenix every two weeks to make these inspections.  This is why commercial construction loans are almost always made by local banks.

“But George, if the banks are too scared to make construction loans right now, why can’t some other type of enterprising commercial lender start making them?”

There are several problems with this.  First of all, banks offer construction loans at rates as low as 4.25%.  I actually had to look up the current rate on commercial construction loans for this blog article, and do you know where I went?  I actually went to our new Commercial Loan Resource Center, which always shows you the latest interest rates on commercial real estate loans.  Haha!  If you have not checked out our new Commercial Loan Resource Center, you are really missing out.  Totally free.

A competing commercial real estate lender (private money lender) might have to charge 8% to 11% for a construction loan, and that higher interest cost would cut deeply into the developer’s profit.  An extra 4% interest on a $5 million construction loan is real money.

The second problem is that construction loans have to be disbursed as the work progresses.  That means that the lender has to sit on his dough, not earning any meaningful interest, until the developer is ready to draw down on his loan.  That’s not very attractive for non-bank commercial lenders (think private money lenders).

The private money lender could fund the entire loan proceeds into a builder’s control account and demand that the developer pay interest on the entire loan amount from Day 1; but this would be horribly expensive for the developer.  A builder’s control account is an independent escrow set up to hold the proceeds of a construction loan until certain work is done.

The last problem with having a private money commercial lender make construction loans is that the lender will often be located too far away to make timely progress inspections.  Suppose the lender is based in San Diego and the project is located in Phoenix.  Progress inspections would be hard… but not impossible.

It has occurred to me that a great many developers across the country have started residential subdivisions, and they personally guaranteed their acquisition and development loans (“A&D”).  They had their normal bank all primed to make the construction loan, once the horizontal improvements were in place.

An A&D loan is a loan to a developer to buy the land, to get it properly zoned, and to complete the horizontal improvements.  It’s like a pre-construction loan.

Horizontal improvements including the clearing of the land, grading of the land, compacting the land, and installing streets, curbs, water, sewer, and power.

Now imagine you’re a very good homebuilder, a responsible guy who tries not to use excessive debt or take too many chances.  You have successfully built out and sold off five previous residential subdivisions.  You have built up a respectable $7 million net worth.  You take out a $4 million A&D loan on your next subdivision.

Suddenly the Coronavirus Crisis hits, and the $4 million balloon payment on your A&D loan, which you have personally guaranteed, is due in just three more months.  Your bank notifies you that they will not be making any construction loans for the foreseeable future.  You contact two dozen other banks, and they all say the same thing.  “Quick, Jack, what do you do?”  (Famous movie line.  Can you name it?  Hint: The bad guy lost a finger defusing a bomb.)

I think there is a real opportunity for some mortgage funds, if any of them have survived, to fund the completion of this project for the developer and to charge him an equity kicker of an absolutely insane percentage (85%?) of the profits.  What choice does the developer have?  He personally guaranteed the A&D loan!  He simply must get out from under that personal guarantee.

An equity kicker is additional interest, in addition to the nominal interest rate, that takes the form of a share of the increased value of the property or a share of the profits upon sale.  A common equity kicker might be 10% to 30%.  The nominal interest rate is the interest rate stated or “named” on the note.

Conclusion:

If your brother-in-law is a union carpenter, he would be smart to apply right now for a job delivering goods for Amazon or Wal-Mart.  His construction job is not coming back.  There will be very few commercial construction loans funded over the next three years, which translates to very few required construction jobs.

*President Trump and the Fed are determined not to let commercial real estate fall by 45% again, so they are using massive deficit spending and even more massive quantitative easing to keep the U.S. economy from deflating like a pierced balloon.  The problem is that China is not taking similar inflationary steps.  I fear a deflationary tidal wave coming from China later this year, and that wave will impair much of Trump’s and the Fed’s inflationary efforts.  I will blog on what this deflationary tidal wave might look like later in the week.

By George Blackburne

George Smith Partners recently released a tombstone about a commercial loan closing that used a financial term of which I had never heard:

“George Smith Partners arranged $23,750,000 in bridge financing for the refinance of a 229-key, full-service hotel located in Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota…  The Property, built in 1986, underwent a PIP in 2017.”

What in heavens is a PIP?

A PIP is a Property Improvement Plan required by a brand or franchise – usually a hotel franchise, like Marriott or Hilton – to maintain or improve standards.  Often the property owner needs to obtain a secondary loan or refinance the property.

A property improvement plan (PIP) is required to bring a hotel in compliance with brand standards.  According to HVS, an effective PIP should help owners gain market share, increase guest satisfaction, drive revenue performance, and enhance profitability.  Elements like lighting, faucets, and fixtures are foundational for brand standards, but now energy-efficient equipment upgrades are entering the equation.

One hotel franchisor recently said that her company is pushing hard to incorporate sustainability measures into the conversion process. There are things that the franchise is recommending in order for the franchisee to run an efficient building.

For instance, if a boiler system has a 30-year life expectancy, but it’s only 20-years-old, the franchisee might consider changing it out early because there is no down time, new systems are 30 percent more energy efficient, and there is a good ROI attached.  “We’re looking at mechanical systems, chillers, boilers, and things that are not very sexy,” she says. “It’s really important in looking at how much it’s going to cost to operate that piece of property.”

Property Improvement Plans (PIP’s) are not cheap.  PIP costs can vary greatly with different brands, hotel sizes, and property locations.  One of the most popular PIP’s, Holiday Inn’s Formula Blue, usually costs between $10,000 and $25,000 per room.  Since the average Holiday Inn Express location has around 75 rooms, that adds up to between $750,000 and $1.875 million in total costs.  Hampton Inn’s Forever Young Initiative is another popular PIP, which experts estimate will cost between $15,000 and $40,000 per room.

Yikes.  That’s real money. SBA loans are often, but not always, utilized to finance a PIP.  It is important to understand the types of improvements a prospective hotel owner can make using SBA funds.  Experienced hotel owners often focus on the following areas:

• Renovations to exterior facades – including signage, roofing, and colors
• Room and lobby updates such as lighting and fixtures
• New amenities such as indoor/outdoor pools and fitness areas
• Expand or improve parking
• Replacing mechanical items that are close to end of their useful life – such as the roof or heating system.

Instead of obtaining secondary financing, many property owners choose instead to refinance the entire property.  Because ten-year Treasuries are so low, this is the best time in history to refinance your property with a CMBS loan.

Article By George Blackburne

When a bank makes a commercial construction loan, it is certainly not going to take all of the risk.  A bank will usually require that the developer cover at least 20% to 30% of the total project cost – land cost, hard costs, soft costs, and a contingency reserve equal to 5% of the hard and soft costs.

Usually this takes the form of the developer contributing the land free and clear of any liens, plus having paid much, if not all, of the engineering and architectural fees.

Therefore I was shocked to read a tombstone sent out by my friends at George Smith Partners, one of the oldest commercial mortgage banking companies in the country.  You will recall that a tombstone is a closing announcement designed to show the types of commercial loans that a particular lender makes.

The tombstone boasted of the closing of a $4 million non-recourse land loan in Beverly Hills, at 8% interest for one year.  This land loan was made at 90% loan-to-cost (LTC)!  Ninety percent on a land loan???  I know that Colorado oregano is now legal in California, but 90% LTC on land is an insane amount of leverage.  (In this particular case, the cost was the same as the fair market value.)

So I wrote to my buddy, Bryan Schaffer (a very good man), and asked, “Bryan, I don’t understand.  What is the exit strategy?  Any construction lender is going to expect the developer to contribute the land free and clear, and it might require even more developer’s contribution.”

Before I share with you Bryan’s answer, I need to explain that, prior to the Great Recession, banks were allowed to give developers credit for the appreciation in the value of their land.  For example, suppose a developer purchased some land for $1 million, and three years later, because he bought shrewdly, the land now appraises for $3 million.

Back then, the bank was allowed to value that land at $3 million for equity purposes.  Therefore, if the developer only owed $500,000 on this $3 million piece of land, the bank would say that the developer contributed $2.5 million in equity towards the proposed construction loan.

But then the Great Recession hit, and construction lenders took huge losses.  To curb what Federal regulators deemed as reckless commercial construction lending, banks were only allowed to value land at the developer’s actual cost – in this case, just $1 million.  This has greatly restricted commercial construction lending over the past decade.

We are now ready to reveal Bryan’s answer to the question, “A land loan of 90% loan-to-value?  What the heck have you been smoking?”  Haha!

“George, It is very hard to get the full appreciated value of the land.  On this deal, if you just did a construction loan, most lenders would only give the developer his basis (actual cost), which was $1.4 million.”

“With a $4MM land loan and an appraisal at $4.4 million, the bank will give us at least a $4 million value for land – and most likely the full $4.4 million value.  At some banks, if he deposits the $4 million (from the loan proceeds), they will loan him the entire $4 million against it at a very low rate, which he will use to pay off his land loan.  He will get the full $4 million to $4.4 million credit (for the value of the land) and will also show $4 million of liquid assets, but it will be in a restricted account.”

“So the hard money loan cost him $200K to $300K, but in exchange he does not have to bring in fresh cash of $2-3 million and likely also looks better for future loans because he has the $4 million in a restricted account.  It is a little bit of a financial game, and it is only good for someone that does not have the cash.  Hope that helps, Bryan.”

Did you get lost?  It helps to understand that banks only want to lend to developers with lots of cash on hand.  Our developer will take this $4 million in land loan proceeds and stick it into the account of the bank which will make the new construction loan.  It’s a restricted account, so the dough can only be used to construct the proposed 12-unit apartment building.

Because the land has a whopping $4 million loan against it, the bank can’t just value the land at the developer’s cost of $1.4 million.  It makes no sense, so the bank is forced to value it at least at $4 million.  And since the bank is already breaking the Fed’s rule about valuing the land at the developer’s actual cost, they will probably cave in and value the land at its $4.4 million appraised value.

So the land loan costs the developer $200,000 to $300,000 in loan fees and interest – but it reduces by $2 million to $3 million the amount of equity the developer has to contribute to the property.

As Bryan explained, its kind of a shell game (1) to make the developer look liquid and rich; and (2) to get around the Fed’s rule that bank construction lenders must value the land at the developer’s actual cost.  I suspect that there are a lot of parties winking at each other.  Haha!

By George Blackburne

I have a great training article about commercial loans for you today.  How do conduits price their commercial loans?  After all, commercial lenders cannot buy a forward commitment from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, like a residential mortgage banker; yet most commercial loans today are fixed rate loans.  How on earth do the commercial loan officers, working for these big-time commercial lenders, know what to quote?

Prices and interest rates across the entire world are declining.  This could be wonderful news for those of us in the commercial loan business.

Before I explain, I want to bring you up to date on a blog article that I wrote last week postulating that a world war with China and Russia may be brewing.  This was a pretty important article, and I urge you to read it first.

The ten largest economies include (1) the United States; (2) China; (3) Japan; (4) Germany; (5) United Kingdom; (6) India; (7) France; (8) Italy; (9) Brazil; and (10) Canada.  I was personally surprised to see that the economies of both Brazil and Canada made the top ten.

Most of these economies are shrinking in population, and this is extremely deflationary.