CHICAGO—Pillar has just added a total of five veterans from across the country to its multifamily loan origination group. The new hires include a new managing director for the Chicago office, and others who will work out of Boca Raton, FL, and Washington, DC.

Pillar, an affiliate of Guggenheim Partners, provides Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD, CMBS and life-company loans. As reported in GlobeSt.com, in late 2012, the two launched an affordable housing division. And last year, Chicago-based Cohen Financial merged into the Pillar Financial, LLC platform.

Adam K. Klingher, managing director, leads the other new Chicago hires, Joseph Markech and Lancelot Lie, both directors. Gabe Seghi, vice president, joins the Boca Raton office, and will focus primarily on the HUD space. Cullen O’Grady, vice president, joins the DC office, and will focus primarily on multifamily clients for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD products.

“With the addition of these five outstanding new hires, Pillar offers one of the most tenured multifamily loan origination teams in the country,” says Manny Brown, co-head of origination. “Adam is the perfect fit to lead the Chicago-based team members. He comes to Pillar with a highly successful 25-year track-record in the multifamily and affordable housing lending industry, working for a number of major multifamily lenders, such as Freddie Mac, Washington Mutual Bank, CNA Insurance, Centerline Capital and GMAC Commercial Mortgage. During his career, Adam has been responsible for originating more than $10 billion in multifamily loans.”

Markech was most recently with Centerline’s mortgage banking group. Like Klingher, he has 25 years of experience in commercial real estate lending. He has worked for a host of private companies and government agencies, including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD, life companies, CMBS and commercial banks. Lie has more than 18 years of experience and specializes in advising multifamily investors to optimize their debt financing needs. He has worked for Washington Mutual, Countrywide Financial, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Seghi joins Pillar from Housing and Healthcare Finance, where he originated HUD financing for multifamily properties and healthcare facilities across the country. O’Grady was recently at Vanguard Realty Group in Rockville, MD, where he was vice president of investment sales for more than five years. Prior to that, he was a senior associate in the national multi-housing group at Marcus and Millichap.