LEM Closes Mezzanine and Preferred Equity deals in New Hampshire and Florida

LEM Mezzanine, a direct lender and investor in high-leverage mezzanine debt and preferred equity, recently closed deals in New Hampshire and Florida. The transactions, each with separate borrowers, totaled $4.5 million.

The first deal was with a new opportunity fund and involved an apartment property in Lebanon, New Hampshire, near the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. This was a $1.5 million mezzanine loan deal behind a new, 10-year conduit loan. "We lowered our minimum deal size earlier this year and it has resulted in a marked increase in the number of deals we are seeing," said Jay Eisner. "We've found that we are getting a lot of repeat business from smaller borrowers."

The second deal was for the acquisition of an apartment property in St. Petersburg, FL that had an existing FNMA loan. "We structured this deal as preferred equity so that we could comply with FNMA's requirements," said Herb Miller. "We've done a number of deals where borrowers were acquiring assets with existing conduit or agency debt and our experience in this area helped get this deal closed timely and efficiently."

LEM structures its investments in a variety of different ways including mezzanine loans, preferred equity and A/B notes and provides fundings behind new conduit and agency loans with terms of up to ten years. LEM also specializes in providing financing in transactions where there is existing first mortgage debt. They have worked with a number of different servicers and special servicers to develop structures that either comply with existing loan covenants or can be approved quickly.

LEM, a $200 million fund, focuses on multifamily, office, retail and industrial properties nationwide, generally valued in the $10 million to $60 million range, and makes mezzanine investments of between $1 million and $10 million per property. The company provides financing of up to 85% to 90% of the capital structure with terms of up ten years. LEM's principals include Ira Lubert, Jay Eisner and Herb Miller. LEM's objective is to invest over $100 million per year. LEM and Lubert-Adler are part of Independence Capital Partners, a family of private investment management firms with approximately $3 billion of capital under management.