From the April 17, 2024 issue of the Colorado Real Estate JournalWhile there was a renewed sense of optimism among lenders at the Mortgage Banking Asso­ciation's annual conference in February, the commercial real estate industry isn't done fight­ing against major headwinds. And, arguably, the most prob­lematic factor in the industry today is the high cost and low availability of financing. The banking environment continues to be challeng­ing and, in my opinion, will remain so throughout the remainder of 2024. While there are undoubtedly bank deals still getting done, their cost of capital, depository require­ments, and strict underwriting metrics often lead to under­whelm...

CRE Community, Borrower Clients, Lending Partners and Friends – It is with great honor and excitement that I get to announce Aimee Love as our newest Partner at Essex Financial Group. This is a transformational move for our company, as we continue to strive to be the best real estate capital markets advisory firm in the Rocky Mountain Region. Aimee’s reputation, work ethic, knowledge and integrity are second to none in our industry, and I am confident that her leadership and skillset will take our platform to new levels.Aimee is joining Essex with a 16-year career in regional banking. Most recently, Aimee was a Regional President at Independent Financial where she ran...

The first phase at Quantum 56, a Class A, six-building, 868,360-square-foot industrial park situated west of I-25 on 56th Ave, developed by Hines, has broken ground. Phase I, featuring three buildings totaling 581,250 square feet of warehouse/manufacturing space, is set to be completed in Q2 2024.Quantum 56 is designed by Ware Malcomb and is being constructed by Arch-Con Corporation.Essex Financial Group secured the construction loan for Phase I. The loan was provided by one of Essex’s correspondent life insurance company relationships.Jason White, Mitchell Zatz, and Carmon Hicks of JLL will lead the leasing efforts on behalf of Hines. Essex’...

We have reached the halfway point for 2023, and what a year it’s been … so far.The first six months of the year brought hasty interest rate hikes, confused capital markets, volatility industrywide, new lender underwriting parameters, and a lot of unanswered questions about the future. Yet, despite all these factors, lenders who were in the market and active (primarily life companies and agencies) found a way to get capital out the door efficiently, to get a head start on their annual allocations. We were seeing sales transactions move forward (albeit at lower levels compared to 2022) and had proactive borrowers getting ahead of pending maturities 12 to 24 months out, not knowi...