At the recent Trends seminar I made the statement that while conduit lending appears to be making a comeback in other parts of the country, particularly the larger markets, it would be 18 months to two years before we saw conduit lending in our part of the world. Furthermore, I said, it would be the larger loans on trophy assets with low leverage that come here first.
I might have been wrong.
Recently I have been contacted by several national lenders who are looking for conduit executions as low as $4 million. And they are not put off by our markets, though deals would probably be limited to our largest five or six areas. The trick, as always, is to have stable cash flow with good history and a good deal structure.
For those of you who do not remember conduit loans, these are the long-term loans that carry a 25- to 30-year amortization with a balloon maturity after 10 years, have a fixed-interest rate and are non-recourse. The property types financed include apartments, office buildings, retail properties, industrial and a few others.
Now to be clear: I have not closed a conduit deal for years and do not have one in the works at present, and these contacts might not be able to deliver. But you can be sure that I am going to send a few through the system to see if things go as promised. If they do, we might be on the way to freeing up bank capital years ahead of schedule. We might also have a solution for a number of older conduit loans that are maturing in the next few years.
Keep your fingers crossed.
(Brian Andrews is a certified mortgage banker specializing in the financing of commercial real estate. His business is Andrews Commercial Real Estate Services and he can be reached at brian.andrews@acmla.com.)
