Business Lines
Real Estate Debt Business
We acquire, originate and structure senior and subordinate debt investments generally secured by commercial properties, which we finance primarily by issuing CDOs, income-producing real estate. Our management entered this business to capitalize on its significant real estate equity investment experience and capital markets expertise.
Through our origination offices located in New York, NY, Dallas, TX, and Los Angeles, CA, we have built a franchise with a reputation for providing capital to high quality real estate investors who want a responsive and flexible balance sheet lender. Given that we are a lender who does not generally seek to sell or syndicate the loans we originate, we are able to maintain flexibility in how we structure loans that meet the unique needs of our borrowers. For example, we can make a loan to a borrower that can be increased in size over the loan term if the borrower increases the value of the collateral property. Typical Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities, or CMBS, and other conduit securitization lenders cannot generally provide these types of loans because of constraints within their funding structures and because they usually originate loans with the intent to sell them to third parties. Additionally, our centralized investment organization enables senior management to review potential new loans early in the origination process which, unlike many large institutional lenders with several levels of approval required to commit to a loan, allows us to provide a high degree of certainty to our borrowers that we will close a loan on terms substantially similar to those initially proposed. We believe that this level of service has enhanced our reputation in the marketplace and will generate increasing business from repeat customers.