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Guess Who's Back For More Deals?

Orange County
Guess Who's Back For More Deals?
Entrepreneurial players are seeking bridge loans for value-add deals, according to Sabal Financial Group, which is expanding to meet the demand. (Makes sense. The entrepreneurs ogled over The Social Network and misread the title as The SoCal Network.)
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Jim Martin (Newport Beach-based Sabel tapped him to direct its new CRE lending program) tells us the demand for bridge loans is coming from a variety of sources, but the bulk are from real estate entrepreneurs with connections to institutional equity or friends and family equity. “We like this type of borrower because they have block-by-block knowledge of their markets and great recognition of value,” Jim adds. “With the buy/sell activity heating up, we’re seeing steady demand for acquisition or reposition financing, and with the huge wave of maturing loans, there's also strong demand for refinance/recapitalization requests in connection with DPOs.”
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Jim is seeing a lot of retail deals with creative repositioning strategies, along with plenty of tired but well-located office buildings being acquired at well below replacement cost. To meet the new demand for financing, Jim says Sabal plans to hire 100 new employees over the course of 2013 and double the size of its HQ. Sabal has already hired ex-Navy SEAL Jason Hull as its new biz dev director (he’s the one in the shades, we think); Jason previously helmed biz dev at distressed real estate firm Trigild.