Pensam Capital Buys Discounted Mortgage on MOB

MIAMI-Pensam Capital, a Miami-based private real estate lender and investment firm, purchased a discounted mortgage on an Orlando medical office building known as the Sienna Gardens Professional Building with a face value of $8 million in the first week of June. The 36,800-square foot, Class A Orlando office building, built in 2001, is about 50% occupied.

“The building’s low occupancy rate is partly the result of the poor economy,” says Michael Stein, a principal with Pensam.  Tenants moved out and the borrower, an Orlando-based owner, could no longer pay on the only debt on the building, which was the note which Pensam just purchased. The property went into receivership, which made it hard to find new tenants, because the owner needed approval from the bank which held the mortgage before he could sign a lease, he says.

Since the building has been taken out of receivership, the owner is negotiating two or three leases, says Stein. He declined to give the owner’s name except the corporate name, which is Optima, LLC. He also declined to reveal the name of the bank which held the mortgage.

Pensam could either foreclose on Sienna Gardens and take possession of it, or restructure the note with the borrower, says Stein. The loan was acquired as a non-performing note from a special servicer, he says. “There was a judgment and we’ve stepped into the shoes of the lender, but at this point, it is too early to know if we want to own the building.

Pensam, which was a year old in June, offers bridge, mezzanine and equity funding secured by residential, office, retail, hospitality and industrial properties. The company is an opportunistic lender which focuses on situations in which the borrower is short on time or capital, says Stein.

“Our interest rates are in the mid-teens, but our advantage is that we are able to move quickly,” says Stein. “We closed the deal for the Orlando office building in five days and another deal on a Melbourne shopping center in two weeks,” he says.

 Pensam gave a bridge loan for $1.15 million to the owner of the 90,00-square-foot Shoppes of Hidden Harbour in Melbourne, Florida, says Stein. Although he declined to reveal the purchase price for the building or the actual owner, giving the corporate name of Melbourne Schippers, LLC, he says that his company’s bridge loans have a 50% to 60% loan-to-value. The Shoppes of Hidden Harbour was a grocery-anchored center, but lost its anchor, a discount supermarket , and today the roughly 25-year-old property is only about 30% occupied, says Stein. 

Although commercial real estate economy is depressed, Stein said that he and his partners thought it was a good time to form a private lending company, because the banks haven’t been lending. “The big funds out of New York and Chicago aren’t interested in deals under $10 million, so we thought that would be a good niche. We are Florida-based and have expertise in the Florida market,” he says.

Stein says that Pensam was capitalized with the principals’ own money as well as private investment.  “We saw there was a need for liquidity, so we started by providing short-term bridge financing. Later, we started doing equity transactions as well,” he says.