RCA in the commercial property press:

Carlton Markets Pools of FL, CA, NV Loans

GlobeSt reports: Carlton Group CEO Howard Michaels says his company has been hired by an institutional seller to sell around $268 million in mostly sub- and non-performing residential development and hospitality loans in Florida, Nevada and California. Managing director Thomas McCarthy tells GlobeSt.com he cannot identify the institutional lender that retained his company.

Included among the two sets of loans are 28 assets that include a multi-tenant commercial/industrial building, the penthouse of a 16-story condo building, several large finished custom estate homes in a gated community and around 1,000 acres of undeveloped land zoned for large residential lots, according to offerings posted on the Carlton auction website. McCarthy says the loans are being offered on a competitive sealed-bid basis and prospective bidders can bid on the assets individually or collectively as portfolios.

He says the Carlton Group, which saw over $4 billion in equity and debt financing in 2008, has seen business grow slowly this year, but by the second half of next year, "we’re contemplating that business will be quite active." He adds that at the auction site, he’s noticed that the bid-ask gap is narrowing.

Dan Fasulo, managing director at Real Capital Analytics, tells GlobeSt.com that loan offerings like this one have seen a spike in activity in recent months. However, he says that since most of the transactions are private in nature and don’t have to be recorded publicly, they are often difficult to track. Nonetheless, Fasulo says a number of these acquisitions have been made by investors looking for bargains.

"But there have also been acquisitions of a more defensive nature by investors that have other positions in the same deal like equity, mezzanine or first loan," he says. Fasulo adds there have also been many lenders acquiring properties at foreclosure auction where they owned the loan on a property. The lenders will buy the loans "since they have the most to lose if a property sells for less than the mortgage, and they are usually in the position to offer the highest price."