Institutional Sponsors Get Easy Money

Shlomi Ronen is the managing principal and founder of Dekel Capital and is a Los Angeles market expert.

LOS ANGELES—While we saw some pull back in the debt markets earlier this year, multifamily properties, especially those with institutional owners, aren’t seeing a shortage of available capital. A joint venture between institutional investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management and SARES-REGIS Group has secured a $129.8 million loan to refinance two multifamily properties in Thousand Oaks.

The loan has a five-year term and a floating rate, and was funded through a national bank. The borrower will use the funds to pay off matured debt and fund capital improvements. Shlomi Ronen, a managing principal at Dekel Capital and a capital markets expert that was not involved in this specific transaction, says that these types of deals aren’t unusual for good-quality assets in good locations. “With institutional ownership, my guess is that they requested a low loan-to-value, which in that scenario makes it ideal for a bank, because it is a very safe loan in an asset class that is very well liked by both banks and agencies,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “There is a lot of capital out there for this type of loan, and I expect that they got really good pricing as a result. HFF executive managing director Mike Tepedino, senior managing director Kevin MacKenzie, managing director Charles Halladay and director Brian Torp secured the funds on behalf of the borrower, but declined to comment on the deal.