Transaction Overview
George Smith Partners successfully placed a $13,850,000 permanent loan for the refinance of a 213,000 square foot Class A, multi-tenant office building located in the heart of Downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The multi-tenant building has a unique combination of national and local businesses. The Sponsorship has added tremendous value by improving the Property and creating state of the art shared amenities.
Challenge:
The Downtown St. Louis office market has been weak mainly because several buildings fully occupied by Fortune 500 Companies have gone vacant with tenants moving to the suburbs or out of town. Several lenders were concerned about the market and high level of vacancy. In addition, lenders usually only offer interest only payments options with leverage of 60-65%. For this property, the sponsor desired long term low fixed rate non-recourse financing with some interest only, but also required the higher leverage to make the loan work.
Solution:
With experience in the market, GSP utilized an international relationship lender whom we had completed other complicated office transactions to complete this financing. We overcame the lenders objections by providing detailed market research and access to local experts, which demonstrated to the Capital Provider the strength of multi-tenant office market as compared to the high vacancy in the single tenant downtown office market. Thanks to our understanding of the market and relationship with the Lender, GSP was able to secure 10 Year Non-Recourse fixed rate of 4.00% with 4 years I/O at 73% Loan to value and close the loan in under 30 days.
