Recap with Brandon Roth Brandon Roth

Max Nipon is a principal with Montgomery Street Partners, as well as the president of their ground lease vehicle called Ground Lease REIT.  Our conversation covers the following topics:

- Overview of Montgomery Street Partners and Ground Lease REIT
- How ground leases are used as a financing tool
- How their ground leases are sized, priced, and structured
- Common scenarios where sponsors are using ground leases today
- Scenarios that do not work well for their program
- Which senior lenders are comfortable with ground leases
- How the ground lease industry will evolve going forward

Max can be reached at nipon@mspcm.com.

Chris Robbins is the co-founder of GreenRock and is one of the leaders in the C-PACE industry having closed nearly $500M in C-PACE transactions.  Our conversation answers the following questions about PACE financing:

- What is it?
- What are the primary benefits?
- What are the three most common use cases?
- What are PACE eligible measures?
- How is the amount of capital determined?
- How is it priced?
- What is the typical closing process and timeline?
- Which senior lenders are open to it?
- How has the PACE market evolved and where is it headed?

If you have questions about C-PACE, Chris can be reached at: CRobbins@greenrockhc.com

Erik Hanson is an investment sales broker for JLL that has been selling office buildings in San Francisco for the past 15 years.  His team has been especially busy over the past 12 months selling most of the deals you see in the news like 60 Spear, 115 Sansome, etc.

Our conversation covered many topics, including:

- Summary recap of the office market from 2009 to today
- Recent transactions
- How buyers are valuing vacant vs leased buildings
- Tenant demand / current market rent
- Market vacancy in Class A vs B/C buildings
- Changing work-from-home trends
- Acquisition financing

Jeremy Driscoll is a managing director for Principal Asset Management. He has been with the firm for 21 years and has closed over $10 billion in total loan volume.  

The conversation covers many topics including:

- Various loan programs available
- Loan sizing and pricing
- Pref equity sizing and pricing
- Underwriting standards
- How life company pricing works (e.g. CM rating and its impact on spread)
- Loan modifications
- Recent case study
- 2024 outlook
- 9-month internship program

Shawn Cully is a managing director in the San Francisco office for Prime Finance. He has been with the firm for 14 years and has closed over 200 bridge loans surpassing $5 billion in total loan volume.  

The conversation covers many topics including:

- Background on how Prime Finance was started
- The reasons why Prime has consistently been one of the top debt funds in the country.
- What is a debt fund and how do they generate higher returns?
- What are the benefits and risks of using different types of back leverage?
- Prime's focus in the current market
- Requirements for financing office buildings today
- Loan modifications
- Outlook for 2024