What otherwise would have been heralded as a liquidity achievement in today’s lending environment is, instead, leaving behind more questions than answers.
In January, Pittsburgh-based PNC Real Estate Finance announced that it had arranged a three-year, $214 million construction loan to the Monaco North Urban Renewal joint venture, led by Short Hills, N.J.-based development firm Roseland Property Co.
However, it’s unclear when portions of the credit facility, which will be used for construction of the Monaco, a 524-unit luxury apartment complex in Jersey City, N.J., were first extended.
Neither PNC nor Roseland were willing to comment on the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of the facility or otherwise provide information on the amount of equity that the borrowers have committed to the deal. Also left ambiguous was whether or not the construction loan is a successful result of debt negotiating in the current economic climate or merely the tapping of a pre-existing credit line.
Though not involved in the deal, David Smith, vice president of capital markets at San Francisco-based Cohen Financial, sympathizes with the hush-hush nature of the underwriting in today’s tight debt markets. “I don’t think anybody wants to kill the golden goose, that’s for sure,” Smith says, adding that borrowers looking for debt without disproportionate LTV requirements or recourses would do well to turn to GSE lending from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Authority.
