H&R's Five-Month Mortgage Volume Hits $156M but Hospitality Loans Still Off

MIAMI-Although his firm has booked $156.35 million in the first five months of the year and has a total $200 million in deals in the funding pipeline, Henry Rodstein, president of 19-year-old H&R Mortgage & Realty Co. has no illusions about the hospitality industry’s chances of garnering a healthy portion of those funds.

He says that except for a handful of specialty transactions, most lenders remain deaf to hotel/motel owners applying for loans when their properties are showing 50% to 60% occupancy levels and their cash flow stream is sagging.

“Most lenders look at the hospitality sector as a business, not actually as a real estate asset per se,” Rodstein tells GlobeSt.com in a telephone interview. “That means, at the end of the day, when the cash flow and occupancies of the business are down, there isn’t much chance for a mom and pop hotel/motel operator along Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, for example, to get a loan of any kind” yet.