$4,300,000 credit facility for an oceanfront cooperative community, situated on more than 8 acres of prime property in Amagansett, Long Island

Winter & Company has arranged and closed a 3.10%, 15-year fixed rate, $4,300,000 credit facility for an oceanfront cooperative community, situated on more than 8 acres of prime property in Amagansett, Long Island, in an area known as the Hamptons. 

This sixty-nine-unit, 18-building vacation home co-op features 347 feet of frontage on the ocean beach, along with its own Tennis Club and Beach Club. Winter & Company arranged a highly customized financing package which includes a $3,800,000, 15-year, fixed-rate, fully self-liquidating underlying mortgage, along with a $500,000 unsecured line of credit with a term that matches the mortgage. The interest rate was locked for 60 days, upon the borrower’s signing of the lender’s term sheet, which proved to be very important in the midst of an increasing interest rate environment.

Challenges and Solutions:

Lenders that are active in the co-op underlying mortgage lending marketplace always prefer to lend on co-op communities that are as close to 100% owner-occupied as possible. They tend to dislike seasonally operated/specialized properties that have a significant percentage of units that are rented to third parties. Lenders also tend to shy away from properties that are seasonal, and this property is both seasonal and also many of the units are sometimes owner-occupied, but most often rented on a weekly or even daily basis to vacationing New Yorkers. Winter & Company was able to overcome these issues and brought several choices to the co-op: a) a 10-year, fixed rate interest-only loan or b) a 15-year fixed rate loan that would self-amortize over the loan term, with either choice priced at 3.10% (which, at the time of rate lock was 130 basis points above the 10-year Treasury rate). The co-op selected the 15-year fully liquidating mortgage in order to rapidly amortize the mortgage. The loan was structured without a real estate tax escrow, giving the co-op the flexibility to control its capital, and to pay the real estate taxes when due.