Dealmaker: Love Funding Secures $29M in South Carolina, Maryland

Love Funding, Washington, D.C., secured $10.8 million to convert a former textile mill into market-rate loft apartments in Greer, S.C.

Tammy Tate, Senior Director with Love Funding, secured the funds through HUD’s 221(d)(4) loan insurance program. She said the project involves substantially rehabilitating a two-building former textile mill to loft-style residential apartments. Once completed, Lofts by the Lake at Apalache Mill will offer 97 one- and two-bedroom units on 7.2 acres. The property dates to the mid-1830s. The original wooden mill was demolished in 1903 to make way for a second mill. The first modern mill opened in 1988.

“The HUD program provided the development team with low-rate, non-recourse financing for the duration of construction and for a subsequent 40-year term,” Tate said. “The transaction also makes use of federal and state historic tax credits and state textile mill credits.” 

Because most of the tax credits are not available until completion, Tate also helped arrange a bridge loan for the borrower through Love Funding’s parent company, Midland States Bank, Effingham, Ill.

Love Funding also closed a $17.9 million HUD loan to refinance Pleasant Homes Apartments, an affordable apartment community in Seat Pleasant, Md.  Senior Director Holly Bray said HUD’s 223(f) loan insurance program provided the development team with non-recourse financing for a 35-year term.

Pleasant Homes Apartments offers 286 one- and two-bedroom units in 32 garden-style apartment buildings, all governed by Section 8 housing assistance payments contract until 2023. An agreement provides that 40 percent of the units remain restricted to those earning 60 percent or less of the area median income until 2033.

Built in 1950, the property was acquired and substantially rehabilitated in 1981 by current owner Gregory Estates Limited Partnership. 

“HUD’s new streamlined processing in the northeast region was a huge help in refinancing this property so quickly,” Bray said. She noted  that HUD processed the application in just 24 calendar days. “It’s a good time for owners and developers who were once put off by historically longer processing times to give the multifamily programs a fresh look,” she said.