Cohen Financial Secures $34M for Multifamily, Retail, Office Assets

Cohen Financial, Chicago, secured $34 million for multifamily, retail and office assets in four states.

Cathy Bronkema, Partner and Managing Director with Cohen Financial, arranged $11.2 million to refinance Westland Colonial Village Apartments in suburban Detroit. Built in the 1960s, Westland Colonial Village has 304 Class B units. 

Bronkema secured the 10-year fixed commercial mortgage-backed securities loan from Morgan Stanley, New York. She called 3.7 percent interest rate “very competitive” with agency financing. 

“The CMBS marketplace has been very active lately, given its slowdown in the first quarter,” Bronkema said.

Cohen Financial also secured $7.6 million for two Phoenix apartment properties. Neal Churney, Managing Director of Cohen Financial’s Phoenix office, secured $5.95 million from a regional bank for Palm Desert Apartments, a 161-unit property in Phoenix’s Metrocenter area. Churney also secured a $1.68 million Freddie Mac Small Balance Loan for Shorewood Apartments, a 21-unit property in midtown Phoenix. The 1960 asset received a renovation in 2012.

“Our client’s objective for the Palm Desert acquisition financing was to utilize the proceeds to acquire the property and then to apply funds for capital improvements and interest carry,” Churney said.

Churney and Cohen Managing Director Don Trossman secured $10.6 million for the Shoppes at Vickery Village in Cumming, Ga. The mixed-use property includes eight retail buildings with 59,800 square feet of space and three office buildings totaling 19,000 rentable square feet. The property’s residential space was not part of the transaction. 

Cohen Financial secured a 10-year fixed-rate CMBS loan with a 30-year amortization schedule through Citigroup Global Markets, New York, for local investor Vickery Village Community LLC. 

In Camarillo, Calif., Cohen Financial Managing Director Paul Schroeder secured $5.3 million to refinance a 40,400 square-foot office property currently leased to three tenants. He placed the fixed-rate non-recourse loan with RGA Financial Group, St. Louis, Mo. 

“We faced a couple of major challenges on this transaction,” Schroeder said. “We had to fund the loan on a specific date to pay off a maturing CMBS loan with no grace period without incurring a penalty or interest premiums and we needed to find a lender that recognized this as a high-quality investment although the asset is located in a tertiary market.”