ATLANTA—Walton Westside, a newly-constructed, 254-unit multifamily asset in Atlanta, just secured a $38.2 million loan. Freddie Mac provided the funding.
JLL international director Faron Thompson and managing director John Bray led the financing efforts. Walton Westside is located in Atlanta’s West Midtown neighborhood, near the area’s top restaurants, retailers and cultural offerings.
Just days ago, Park 83 just secured a $64 million Freddie Mac loan. The 664-unit multifamily asset is in Roswell, GA. Greystone provided a $60.5 million bridge loan in 2014 for the acquisition of Park 83, then guided Cortland Partners to a permanent exit with Freddie’s Program Plus platform within 12 months.
GlobeSt.com caught up with Jake Reid, a senior director at Franklin Street, to get his thoughts. Are lenders becoming looser with financing? What kind of lenders are active in the market?
“While we expect continued competition between the agencies, there will be even more competition for debt origination from CMBS and life companies,” Reid tells GlobeSt.com. “Many properties that were outside of the target criteria for agency debt have lacked the kind of options that we expect them to now have with the resurgence of additional lenders.”
One thing is certain: Atlanta is a high-growth market and investors, developers and lenders alike are willing to place more bets there. A diverse economy, low cost of doing business and affordable housing are among the drivers.
“The Atlanta market is attractive to institutional and local investors and developers,”Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2015 “Local market participants assess the availability of capital and strong local development community as two of the best attributes of the Atlanta market.”
Mike Sivewright, JLL’s Atlanta market director, says multifamily assets continue to lead the way from a volume standpoint, and he’s seeing record pricing for class A office properties. The assets that are trading either have experienced strong rent growth or have strong repositioning potential, he says, but where do we go from here?
“As the economy matures, investor interest will broaden in terms of assets and geography,” says Sivewright. “As for the year ahead, we could see increased buyer demand in Atlanta for class B industrial properties as well as hotels.”
