Commercial Mortgage Finance

On October 26, 2022, Dechert partners Laura Swihart and Stewart McQueen attended the CREFC Capital Markets Conference in New York City. Stewart gave opening remarks and Laura moderated a panel on the current housing market and its intersection with multi-family, single-family and build-to-rent properties. Laura and Stewart sat down with Law Clerks Jared Goldstein and

There’s a lot of reasons to structure a large loan destined for securitization as a mortgage in part and a mezzanine loan in part.  Sometimes it’s simply that the borrower is needy while the capital markets are charry.  In that case, the lender whacks up the credit into a mortgage loan for SASB execution and assumes (hopes) there’s someone out there with sufficient acumen, optimism or naivete to buy the mezzanine loan.  But sometimes, there are other reasons to divide a loan into a mortgage and mezz.
Continue Reading SASB: The (Shotgun?) Marriage of Mortgage and Mezz

Here at Dechert, we have market-leading practices in CRE CLO as well as corporate CLOs, including broadly syndicated and middle market structures.  So, every day that I peer into these two alternate universes, I’m astonished at how different these two fundamentally similar leverage technologies really are.  Certainly, even at a modest remove, they look pretty much the same.  A sponsor is looking for match term leverage and has developed a healthy disquietude about the mark to marketness of the repo market and has read CrunchedCredit assiduously and understands that portfolio lenders need multiple modalities of leverage.  Said well-educated sponsor conveys financial assets into a securitization vehicle which issues time and ratings tranched debt to a wide range of investors seeking exposure to the space in a more liquid and more focused risk/yield return way.  Tada!
Continue Reading A Modest Proposal: Why Can’t CRE CLOs Be More Like Corporate CLOs?

Let me first apologize to my readership. I have been very dilatory in getting this commentary done and this topic is… a bit daunting. In my defense, working for a living can get in the way of thinking and writing. In any event, I have been doing some considerable reading about Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues recently. It had not really been on my screen, in a big way, but has been bubbling along as a thing, important to some, but not so much for us denizens of the commercial real estate finance space.
Continue Reading We All Need Practice Spelling ESG

One of the pleasures of life is re-encountering old friends, catching up on what’s happened while your lives have gone their separate ways, reminiscing about the good old days and reconnecting.  It comes back so fast, it’s like you never were apart.

Me and the Liquidating Trust had just such an experience the other day.Continue Reading A Walk Down Memory Lane with the Liquidating Trust

Last Friday, Law360 published its interview with Crunched Credit’s own Rick Jones as part of its Coronavirus Q&A series. In his interview, Rick discusses the effects COVID-19 has had on the commercial mortgage-backed securities market, reflects on how the current financial climate compares to that of the Great Recession, and contemplates the future of capital

As part of Dechert’s COVID-19 Coronavirus Business Impact Broadcast Series, the Crunched Credit team has released its first-ever podcast: Beds Without Heads: Hotels in the Era of the Coronavirus. In this episode, Dechert global finance lawyers Krystyna Blakeslee, Jessica Bula and Haleh Rabizadeh expand on their recent Crunched Credit blog and discuss the impact

The spread of COVID-19 has created a new reality for the hospitality industry. As of March 25, the CDC reported 54,453 confirmed cases in the U.S., and the number is expected to grow exponentially. In the hopes of slashing infection rates, governments have implemented international travel bans, shelter-in-place orders and other restrictive measures. The second-most popular tourist destination in the world, Spain, has ordered all its hotels and other tourist accommodations to be closed.
Continue Reading Beds without Heads: Hotels in the Era of the Coronavirus

The commercial real estate finance industry is facing substantial challenges due to climate change, particularly with respect to extreme flooding. As flood events continue to occur more frequently and with greater severity across the US, the role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—and its administration of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and