CBRE Buys Two DC Area Office Buildings For $41,500,000.00

CB Richard Ellis Realty Trust just bought two office buildings outside of Washington, D.C. for $41.4MM. The offices are across from Dulles International and are both 100% leased, each by a single tenant, one building is occupied by a government agency the other by a government contractor. Both buildings are SCIF facilities. SCIF stands for “sensitive compartmented information facilities” That just means that access to the buildings and each section of the buildings is highly controlled because they may house classified information.

It’s good to see deals getting done but it’s a little disconcerting when you realize that CBRE is betting $41MM on the growth of government.

Is Trying to Find a Commercial Mortgage Driving You Crazy?

I was fascinated to learn that there is a Psychologist out-there who specializes in treating, helping and coaching owners and operators of apartment buildings. His name is Dr. Ron Beasley. More than 30 years ago Dr. Ron was hired by a large commercial real estate firm (huge into multi-family) to help one of the company’s executives with some anger management issues. He found the experience very rewarding and he recognized the fact that running a real estate operation can drive people nuts. For the last 3 decades he has dedicated his practice exclusively to providing psychological insight to apartment owners and other commercial real estate pros.

Doc Beasley’s firm is called Sage Concepts and he’s located in North Richmond Hills, Texas. I’m not recommending Dr. Beasley, mind you, (Do your own homework before chosing a doctor.) I’m just making note of his interesting choice of clients to focus on.

If trying to find a commercial mortgage is driving you crazy, I do, however, recommend our firm, MasterPlan Capital LLC. We fund commercial mortgage loans with private as-well-as institutional money and continue to be successful even in this extremely soft market. You can use our simple, one page commercial mortgage loan application to apply online and you’ll get an honest answer the very next business day.

AP Warns That Crisis Looms in Commercial Mortgage Sector

The headline tells the story: “Meltdown far from over, new mortgage crisis looms” Yikes!

Here’s the synopsis: With the economy faltering, many commercial tenants, especially retail tenants, will fall behind on their rent payments. This will cause the building owners to fall behind on their mortgage payments in much-the-same manner many residential borrowers have been falling behind on theirs over the last 24 months. Defaults will increase, banks will foreclose, property values will decrease… To make matters worse banks are not willing to refinance properties with notes coming due. According to the AP story, it’s going to be bad, really bad.

We here at MasterPlan Capital are less pessimistic. Things are not looking good out-there, but the news media tends to be mellow-dramatic and over emphasize the negative. We are not Pollyannaish, we know the challenges are real, but we don’t fear boogie men and don’t subscribe to Chicken Little, “the sky is falling” scenarios either. We are still able to close and fund good quality commercial mortgage loans and opportunistic investors are still prowling for good deals.

Happy Thanksgiving!

MasterPlan Capital wishes all our clients and friends a happy Thanksgiving.
We love Thanksgiving around here. In-fact we love it so much the boss has given the whole crew a long weekend. So we are closing up shop Wednesday and won’t be back up-and-running ‘till Monday.

But rest assured, come Monday morning we will be back-at-it, making deals and closing loans!

Ross Perot’s Hedge Fund Loses Big on Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that several prominent hedge funds including one run by the family of H. Ross Perot (presumably with Ross’ billions), have sustained major losses due to the recent deterioration of the commercial real estate mortgage bond market. Andy Stone’s fund, Petra Capital, is also among the unfortunate firms that made big bets in CMBS. Mr. Stone, you may recall, is one of the guys who invented CMBS way back when. (I know, it’s Ironic) These funds and others are dumping commercial real estate debt in-order to meet margin calls from their brokers who lent them copious amounts of money to buy the bonds. Commercial mortgages have fared much better than their residential counterparts, but this news does not bode well for the asset class.
Check out the full story on the WSJ website.

Privately funded commercial mortgage loans are not dependant on the secondary mortgage bond market. Our firm is still making deals and closing loans using private funding sources rather than banks, insurance companies or Wall Street brokers.

Definition of the Day; Amortization

Commercial Mortgage Definition of the Day; Amortization

Amortization: The liquidation of a financial debt through regular periodic installment payments. For tax purposes, the periodic deduction of capitalized expenses such as organization costs

Fitch Considers Downgrading Wachovia Securities’ CMBS Servicer

Wells Fargo is a huge servicer of commercial mortgage backed securities. Wachovia is also a huge CMBS servicer. Fitch is a company that rates bonds, including many, many CMBS. Wells Fargo and Wachovia are merging. This will make them one massive servicer of CMBS. That fact is making Fitch a little nervous.  Fitch may down grade Wachovia’s CMBS servicer ratings. Fitch has placed them on “Rating Watch; Negative” while it makes up its mind.  Read all the nitty gritty details over at marketwatch.com.

www.masterplancapital.com

Consumer Confidence Up From Down

From the AP via newsvine:

Consumer confidence rose in November amid receding gas prices, but Americans’ views on the economy remain the gloomiest in decades as they grapple with massive layoffs, slumping home prices and dwindling retirement funds.

Read the article here.

 

The stock market uninspired

The stock market is decidedly lack-luster today.
The Dow is down about 30 points mid-secession.

Privately Funded Commercial Mortgage Loans, From $1MM+