Bellwether Closes on $75M in Multifamily Financing

Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital has closed on a $75 million loan to a Cincinnati-based owner/operator for the refinancing of five apartment properties in Texas and two in Ohio.

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

Cincinnati—Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital LLC has closed on a $75 million loan to a Cincinnati-based owner/operator for the refinancing of five apartment properties in Texas and two in Ohio. According to the company, the loan was originated in Bellwether Enterprise’s Cincinnati office and was closed and securitized using a Freddie Mac Capital Markets execution, though it didn’t disclose terms.

Bellwether Enterprise is the multifamily and commercial banking subsidiary, launched early in the summer of 2012, of Enterprise Community Investment Inc. Thus far, the subsidiary has overseen more than $421 million in financing for a variety of property types, but in line with wider lending tends, multifamily rental housing has been the subject of more financing than another property type.

In the roughly four months since Bellwether Enterprise has been up and running, its multifamily financing has totaled $211 million. Retail finance is the second-most popular, with a total of $114, and hospitality, healthcare, office and industrial financing have all been considerably less than that.

Bellwether Enterprise, in addition to its commercial mortgage banking platform, will continue to focus on financing affordable and moderate income rental housing, notes CEO Lamar Seats. All together, the company estimates it will reach $1.4 billion in mortgage production volume for 2012.

Multifamily lending as a whole is surging. In its latest annual report on multifamily loan originations, which was published last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association found that in 2011, 2,653 different multifamily lenders provided a total of $110.1 billion in new mortgages for apartment buildings with five or more units, with the 2011 dollar volume representing a 60 percent increase over 2010. Preliminary indications from the organization’s 2012 monthly origination reports point to a large increase in 2012 as well, though perhaps not quite as large in terms of percentage as the previous year.