Recent Commercial Financing

Multi-Tenant Office Property

Wheeler Capital Partners is a trusted partner in finding funding sources for its clients’ financing needs.  Continual development of new funding sources has provided WCP the ability to offer clients uncharacteristically flexible rates, terms, and conditions.

Recently the company placed a $12,500,000 non-recourse, 10-year fixed rate mortgage to facilitate a $4.3 Million cash-out refinance for a 125,750 SF multi-tenant office flex property.  By purchasing a forward rate lock allowed a sub 4% rate.  

2160 Central

Recently the company placed a $2,750,000 fixed rate, construction / spec 10-year term loan for a retail center.  The client was concerned about the uncertain retail leasing market and increasing interest rates. WCP was able to obtain construction / permanent bank financing with a fixed rate during construction and a term of 10 years.

Just another example of how WCP customizes creative solutions for clients throughout the nation. Call and have a conversation describing your needs. Let over 30 years of experience work for you.

NMLS# 1008714




Palm Royale Funeral Home

Wheeler Capital Partners is a trusted partner finding funding sources for all its clients diverse financing needs. Continual development of new funding sources has provided Wheeler Capital Partners the ability to offer clients uncharacteristically flexible rates, terms and conditions.

Recently the company placed a $1 million construction loan completing the development of an existing cemetery. The construction / permanent loan was placed at a regional bank taking advantage of current fixed long-term rates.

Just another example how Wheeler Capital Partners customizes creative solutions for clients throughout the nation. Call and have a conversation describing your needs. Let the over 30 years of experience work for you.




Office Space Projected to Decrease by 145M Square Feet

office space

That’s right: 145 million.

Since April 2020, our lives have changed in myriad ways. We’ve become accustomed to our kids being home while “at school.” We’ve stopped eating out, going to the movies, and vacationing. And, many of us have turned our homes into our workspaces. When you combine this factor with the massive job losses resulting from the pandemic, physical office space requirements just won’t be what they were in the past.

A new study finds that the work-from-home increase resulting from the coronavirus pandemic could result in about 145 million fewer square feet of office space by the end of 2021. Global commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield have issued a report based on data covering widespread job loss during the pandemic combined with work-from-home mandates that demonstrate a significant decrease in the need for workplaces to provide office space. Their findings indicate a 50% baseline probability that space requirements in the US workforce will decrease by 145 million square feet during 2020 and 2021.

The study also found that the main driving force for this decrease in demand is job loss, and not the work-from-home trend – although both factor in. When compared with past recessions, these findings mean that this is the largest decrease in demand for office space ever. It outpaces the demand decrease from job loss in the Great Recession of 2008 by 30%.

Even when factors such as re-opening the workplace with six-foot distancing rules in place, the study finds that job losses and work-from-home will outstrip the need for physical square footage in the office. And, this trend was actually in place before the pandemic turned our lives upside down. Companies have been looking for ways to decrease spending, and, as a result, have been buying less office space for years.

The report’s 50% probability baseline for the 145 million square foot decrease is bookended as well with other potential scenarios. Depending on the pandemic’s impact on public health, and on the US government’s economic stimulus response (or lack thereof), those other potential scenarios could look better for commercial real estate – or, they could look a lot worse.

The study predicts a 10% possibility that job losses continue longer than anticipated, that Congress does not enact stimulus or economic relief legislation, and that the result is a loss of nearly 300 million square feet of office space – or, a 20% vacancy rate. That’s the worst-case scenario prediction. On the other hand, the scenario could work out with public health improving and job losses being staved off, and there could even be more governmental relief made available. If all goes in this optimistic direction, the study predicts a loss of a mere 69 million square feet of office space, and a vacancy rate that peaks at about 15%. The study gives this outcome a 10% probability rate as well.

If that’s the good news, then the only thing to be concluded from C&W’s findings is that commercial real estate is looking forward to massive decreases in the years, and maybe even generations, to come.




Financing for Water’s Edge

Wheeler Capital Partners is a trusted partner finding funding sources for its clients financing needs. Continual development of new funding sources has provided Wheeler Capital Partners the ability to offer clients uncharacteristically flexible rate, terms and conditions.

Recently the company placed a Mortgage Secured Note Offering rated AA/A+ to facilitate $9.5 Million cash out refinancing for a Trenton, New Jersey Skilled Nursing Facility.  This credit facility was interest only for five years and non-recourse.  

Just another example how Wheeler Capital Partners customizes creative solutions for clients throughout the nation. Call and have a conversation describing your needs. Let the over 30 years of experience work for you.

Joe Wheeler | (239) 850-6845

Frank Woodward | (239) 290-0476

NMLS# 1008714




Is it Possible for Appraisers to Accurately Value Commercial Real Estate During COVID-19?

Commercial real estate is currently in a state of great uncertainty, as is commercial activity in general. Because we do not know what we are facing in the long-term regarding COVID-19, business and property owners are dealing with very negative numbers in the moment that may or may not continue.

During a TreppWire podcast, the Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Product Management, Lonnie Hendry,  shared his ideas around accurately evaluating commercial properties during the COVID-19 pandemic. Will it ever be possible for appraisers to accurately value commercial real estate during COVID-19?

Landry explains that one of the largest challenges appraisers are facing is how to provide a view on a property that can be verifiable with hard, timely data. “That opinion has to be based on facts,” Hendry explains further adding that the data is used to calculate property values during periods of market stability including revenues, cap rates, occupancy, and expense ratios. These all come into question during a period like the current one, where sales are non-existent and comps from the last two months are mostly worthless.

Hendry suggests a few potential methods for generating accurate valuations. First by treating COVID-19 as a short-term proposition and valuating the property as stabilized, as he explained, “we’re going to attribute some form of economic obsolescence to this short-term downturn in the marketplace.”

The second approach Hendry offers is dividing a single year’s NOI by a property’s cap rate and reinforcing that calculation with a discounted cash flow analysis. Hendry says, “where you look at maybe the first couple of periods of that discounted cash flow being very negatively impacted by losses in revenue and corresponding cash flow and then ramping up stabilized operation over the remainder of the holding period.”

The third potential scenario includes collecting a store of data that places a distinct emphasis on past downturns and the quantifiable impacts they had on the value of commercial real estate.  This may provide some guidance for the rest of this pandemic once the data is collected, organized, and analyzed – and be even more beneficial for the possible next pandemic.

Wheeler Capital Partners President, Joe Wheeler, says “I think this is an unprecedented event where you basically have a total market collapse across most asset types across the nation. And so logic has to come in as well to say, ‘Nobody really knows what the answer is in terms of where that stabilized market is.”

The numbers around commercial properties will continue to be perilous for the foreseeable future. To gain an appropriate appraisal, longer trends will need to be studied. The collapse of 2008 led to a severe new construction contraction, but the market for existing structures didn’t suffer as severe a hit. While uncertainty about new buildings will continue for a time, existing buildings may come back up in value as the nation adjusts to coronavirus challenges.




New Records Being Set with Commercial Real Estate and Multifamily Lenders

The after-effects of the subprime mortgage crisis are still being felt across the lending industry. While recovery may not have been necessarily swift, there is ample evidence that the industry is recovering well and is even entering a boom period. A national housing shortage has led to a critical need for multi-family housing, creating a favorable economy for commercial real estate investors. Both investors and lenders have responded to the need, leading to a record year for commercial real estate and multifamily lenders. In 2018, closed loan originations rose eight percent to reach a peak high of $574 billion, with loans for multifamily properties accounting for nearly half of all originations.

In spite of the surge of originations, CRE loans for some of the nation’s largest banks are actually tapering off. Contributing factors include a resurgent CMBS market as well as increased competition from smaller banks and even life insurers. Smaller banks, in particular, are seeing a significant increase in holdings across three key categories: construction and development, nonresidential and multifamily.

In January, construction and development loans were up from the previous year-end by an annualized 11.9%; multifamily was up by an annualized 6% and nonfarm, nonresidential was up an annualized 4.7%. Numbers for the top 25 banks in the US, however, showed a marked decline in the same categories, with construction and development loans dropping by nearly $700 million in January, contributing to an annualized decline of more than 7.5%.

Traditionally, the first quarter of the year shows a significant seasonal decline over the last quarter of the previous year and this year was no exception. While originations in the first three months of the year were 34 percent lower than the fourth quarter of 2018, according to research from the Mortgage Bankers Association, commercial and multifamily mortgage loan originations rose 12 percent in comparison to the same period last year. This points to the momentum gained in 2018’s record year of borrowing and lending showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. According to Jamie Woodwell, MBA’s Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Research, first quarter volumes were higher in nearly every property category.

Among capital sources, Freddie Mac and Fammie Mae led the way by showing double-digit loan volume growth. CRE continues to be an attractive market to borrowers thanks to continued low interest rates and strong property values. In the commercial/multifamily category, a 73 percent increase in originations for industrial properties, a 41 percent increase in health care and a 14 percent increase in hotel properties led to an overall increase in lending volume. In fact, that only dollar volume that remained unchanged was for office property loans, with all other categories seeing anywhere from a marginal to a significant increase. With no end in sight to housing shortages across the nation, there is no reason to believe that the last three quarters of 2019 will show an end to the momentum gained in 2018. In fact, 2019 might even be poised to shatter the records set in 2018.