Friday, March 7, 2014

Coldwell Banker Commercial Saunders Real Estate Announces Closing Of More than 380,000 Acres of North Florida Timberland Sold for $562 Million


LAKELAND, FL /PRNewswire/ – A $562 million land purchase, one of Florida’s largest in recent history, was closed March 6, announced Dean Saunders, ALC, CCIM, CEO of Coldwell Banker Commercial Saunders Real Estate in Lakeland, Florida.

Dean Saunders, ALC, CCIM  (http://www.saundersrealestate.com/author/DeanSaunders/) and Jack Vogel (http://www.saundersrealestate.com/author/jack-vogel/)  represented the buyer, AgReserves, Inc. The seller, The St. Joe Company, was represented by TAP Advisors.

“This transaction between two of Florida’s largest and most committed land stewards is a meaningful reminder of the economic and ecological value of agriculture in our state,” said Commissioner of Agriculture, Adam Putnam.

“The acquisition by AgReserves, Inc. of more than 380,000 acres in North Florida from The St. Joe Company reflects a long term investment in the state’s timber and cattle industries.”

CBC Saunders Real Estate is the state’s premier broker of large agricultural, timber, and conservation land transactions. Every year, Florida land value data is delivered in Saunders’ “Market Report,” a comprehensive analysis presented at the firm’s annual “Lay of the Land Conference.” (http://www.saundersrealestate.com/layoftheland/conference-3)  

Jack Vogel

This year’s Conference, 2014′s premier, invitation-only land values event for major Florida land owners, buyers and developers, will be held on April 4th at the Streamsong Resort, Florida.

Coldwell Banker Commercial Saunders Real Estate (http://www.saundersrealestate.com/)  is an authority on all types of Florida land, transacting over $1 billion in sales from 1996 through 2013. 

Expanded in 2013 by adding the CBC Saunders Real Estate | Forestry Group (http://www.saundersrealestate.com/services/real-estate-forestry-group/)  with advanced timberland expertise, the Saunders team of foresters and land real estate professionals offers advisory and transactional services through the home office in Lakeland, FL and its worldwide network of CBC affiliates.

Dean Saunders
CBC Saunders Real Estate offers a broad range of services (http://www.saundersrealestate.com/services)  to meet the real estate needs of Florida landowners. Through long-held relationships with key government and industry decision makers, the firm provides consulting on government issues at local, state and national levels.


 For a complete copy of the company’s news release, please contact:


Contact: Lauren Saunders, 863-648-1528, laurens@saundersrealestate.com

Winter & Co. Retained to Advise Board on Financing for Riverside Drive Cooperative Building on Manhattan's Upper West Side


24-story, 318-unit cooperative building, Riverside Drive, Upper West Side, Manhattan, NY

NEW YORK, NY, March 7, 2014 -- Winter & Company was retained to advise the board of directors of this 24-story, 318-unit cooperative building located on Riverside Drive on Manhattan's Upper West Side in connection with a new $14 million financing assignment.

Winter & Company was able to obtain an offer for a 3.25%, 10-year, interest-only mortgage literally one week before rates began their upward climb.

The pre-war building, which has 306 residential units and 12 commercial units, ultimately chose a $12 million mortgage along with a $2 million unsecured line of credit.  Thus the co-op emerged from the refinancing with more than $6 million of surplus cash, which could be devoted to the work at hand.

Gregg Winter
Timing was critical to identify the correct lender as interest rates had just started to increase, thus the borrower's ability to lock in the interest rate immediately (upon acceptance of the term sheet) was a very important factor.

Over the past year or so, the co-op board had realized that it needed to address many important and expensive repairs and capital improvements, and thus needed a substantially larger mortgage in order to address these items, as well as a substantial unsecured line of credit to provide future funding for unforeseen items in the later years of the loan term.

Furthermore, the new financing would need to be structured as an interest-only loan, in order to minimize the impact of a much larger mortgage on each shareholder's maintenance payments.

The floating rate, unsecured credit line is priced at LIBOR plus 200 b/p with a floor of 3.5%. The 10-year credit line has no non-use fees, and no mortgage recording tax was incurred by the co-op on the credit line, thus saving them $56,000 in closing costs.
  
Winter & Company is a Manhattan-based, commercial mortgage advisory firm that specializes in arranging development and construction financing, multifamily and mixed-use property financing and arranging cooperative underlying mortgages since 1989.

 Its affiliate, W Financial Fund, LP is a direct private bridge lender providing short-term, special situation financing primarily for NYC multifamily and mixed-use properties celebrating its 10th year of successful operations. W Financial was recently profiled in Barron's. The article. “Rock-Solid Real Estate”  is available here.
  
 For a complete copy of the company’s news release, please contact:

Gregg Winter - President
Winter & Company
Creative Minds | Unparalleled Service ®
149 Madison Avenue, Seventh floor
New York, NY 10016
Phone: 212 532-1122 x1

Loan Oak Fund Closes Record Year with $378 Million in Loans; Projects Bridge Lending Growth in 2014



Alexa Mizrahi
LOS ANGELES, CA – Lone Oak Fund, LLC, a private mortgage fund specializing in short term loans on commercial and residential properties throughout California, has announced the close of its highest-volume year in company history.

According to Alexa Mizrahi of Lone Oak Fund, the fund closed 844 loans in 2013, totaling $378,098,000, an 8.67% increase over the prior year’s total.

Since its inception in 2003, Lone Oak has closed nearly 2,900 loans, amounting to over $1.8 billion. 

Lone Oak attributes its rapid growth to working closely with the brokerage community, as well as cooperating frequently with junior trust deed lenders, according to Mizrahi.

“In ten years, we have become one of the most active private money lenders in California,” Mizrahi says. “We provide a crucial financing solution to real estate investors, developers, and foreign nationals.”

Lone Oak expects even greater growth in 2014, with a projected loan volume in excess of $400,000,000. According to Mizrahi, Lone Oak anticipates that this year, in addition to non-owner occupied residential properties, a larger percentage of loans will come from apartment, industrial, and retail properties.

“Investors are more confident with the market and are aggressively acquiring and repositioning properties,” says Mizrahi. “We are experiencing a major upturn in business because our proven ability to close quickly enables borrowers to take advantage of these opportunities.”


Lone Oak manages its own fund, providing flexibility and alternative solutions that work best for its borrowers, according to Mizrahi.  The firm specializes in short term loans with no prepayment penalties, and typically closes its loans within a week or less.

Lone Oak Fund provides refinance loans and acquisition financing on non-owner occupied residential, multifamily, retail, office, and industrial properties, as well as vacant buildings and entitled land.

 For a complete copy of the company’s news release, please contact:

Jenn Quader or Amanda Alenick
Brower, Miller & Cole
(949) 955-7940



Manhattan Retail Building Sells for $13.8 Million; part of a 1031 exchange.

  


6 St. Marks Place, East Village, Manhattan, NY


Barbara Dansker

 NEW YORK,, NY– Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services, the nation’s largest real estate investment services firm, has arranged the sale of 6 St. Marks Place, a five-story elevator retail building located between Astor Place and Second Avenue in Manhattan’s East Village.

The $13,875,000 sales price equates to $889 per square foot.

            Barbara Dansker, Preet Sabharwal, Zachary Weiss and Zachary Ziskin, all in Marcus & Millichap’s Manhattan office, represented the seller, Withinvestors LLC, and the buyer, Kunbing Inc. The property is net-leased by three tenants and was 100 percent occupied at the time of the sale.

            “This transaction is part of a surge in 1031-exchange transactions that is increasing the value of the limited number of retail assets in core markets like New York City,” says Sabharwal.

Preet Sabharwal

            The building is located near Cooper Union, New York University and the new 51 Astor Place office building. St. Mark’s Hotel and retailers including Walgreens, McDonald’s, Papaya King, Gap and Kmart are also close by.

            Built in 1900, 6 St. Marks Place was built in 1900 and has a gross leasable area of 15,600 square feet. The New York Tofu House restaurant occupies the ground floor and the lower level. The second floor was recently leased to the Gallery & Cafe, and St. Mark’s Karaoke occupies the third, fourth and fifth floors. All of the tenants have long-term leases.

For a complete copy of the company’s news release, please contact:

Gina Relva,
Public Relations Manager
(925) 953-1716


HFF secures joint venture equity for industrial acquisition in southwest Phoenix, AZ


43rd Avenue Logistics Center, Phoenix, AZ


Paul Brindley
LOS ANGELES, CA – HFF announced it has secured joint venture equity for the acquisition of 43rd Avenue Logistics Center, a new state-of-the-art, 394,775-square-foot industrial facility located in Phoenix, Arizona.

               HFF worked on behalf of the buyer, Cohen Asset Management, in arranging the joint venture equity in an off market transaction.  Equity proceeds were used to purchase the property.

               43rd Avenue Logistics Center is located in the southwest Phoenix industrial area, a warehouse district popular with large and smaller scale distribution and manufacturing companies.

 The property has rail access and is situated close to Interstates 10 and 17 as well as State Routes 143, 101, 202 and 303.  Completed in 2013, the property is LEED certified and was developed jointly with a local prominent developer and a regional bank that had previously foreclosed on the site.

               The HFF team representing Cohen Asset Management was led by senior managing director Paul Brindley senior managing director Wally Reid and associate director Jeff Sause.

Wally Reid
               Cohen Asset Management, Inc. is a private commercial and industrial real estate investment firm.

Established in 1992 and strategically headquartered in Southern California with a regional office in Northern New Jersey, Cohen Asset Management, Inc. is a proven, national real estate owner and operator with a primary focus on the industrial real estate sector.

 The firm’s relationships extend to high net worth individuals, institutional investors and domestic business entities.

The private real estate investment firm is an active operator and investor of commercial and industrial real estate assets and has a well-established reputation as a value added investor focusing on commercial and industrial real estate opportunities that are inefficiently priced due to a variety of circumstances such as vacancies, rollover risk, sub-optimal management, inefficient current use, deferred maintenance, long-term undervalued leases or other unfavorable property and market conditions.

For a complete copy of the company’s news release, please contact:

Kristen M. Murphy
Associate Director
HFF | One Post Office Square, Suite 3500 | Boston, MA 02109
Main: 617-338-0990 | Direct: 617-848-1572 | Cell: 617-543-4873 | www.hfflp.com


HFF arranges $28 million joint venture equity for Class A office building in Irvine, CA


18301 Von Karman, Irvine, CA

Todd Sugimoto
LOS ANGELES, CA – HFF announced it has arranged $28 million in joint venture equity for 18301 Von Karman, an 11-story, 225,992-square-foot, Class A office building in Irvine, California.

               HFF worked on behalf of the client, Greenlaw Partners, to secure the joint venture equity through Cigna Investments in an off-market recapitalization.  The equity proceeds are being used to acquire the ownership interests of Greenlaw’s previous venture partners.  HFF also advised the new partnership on the senior loan. 

               The property is located on 0.75 acres at the intersection of Von Karman Avenue and Michelson Road and is part of the Von Karman Towers office campus.  Designed by Gensler and developed in 1989 by the Koll Company, 18301 Von Karman won BOMA’s Building of the Year Award (Regional) in 1998.  The property is 86 percent leased to a diverse mixture of tenants.

               The HFF team representing Greenlaw Partners was led by managing director Todd Sugimoto and associate director Jeff Sause.

Greenlaw Partners, LLC is an Orange County, California-based real estate investment, management and development company. 

Since 2003, the company has handled acquisitions and dispositions in excess of $1.5 billion.  Greenlaw currently manages a portfolio of approximately four million square feet with a value approaching $1 billion.  The company’s core focus is acquiring assets throughout selective markets in the western United States.

For a complete copy of the company's news release, please contact:

Kristen M. Murphy
Associate Director
HFF | One Post Office Square, Suite 3500 | Boston, MA 02109
Main: 617-338-0990 | Direct: 617-848-1572 | Cell: 617-543-4873 | www.hfflp.com