CBRE Launches Lending Initiative

NEW YORK CITY-Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. has added a HUD/FHA-insured multifamily and health care mortgage lending capability to the Multihousing Group. The new platform is intended to bolster the company’s Capital Markets business.

“This new initiative will significantly strengthen CBRE’s Capital Markets platform,” notes Ron Halpern, managing director of CBRE’s Multihousing Group in a prepared statement, adding that it will enable the company “to offer our clients the full range of HUD/FHA-insured mortgages for new construction, substantial rehabilitation, refinancing or acquisition loans on apartments, senior housing and health care facilities.”

Halpern, nor his colleagues were able to be reached by deadline to provide further details regarding the new lending initiative, however a spokesperson for CBRE tells GlobeSt.com that this initiative has been in the works for sometime. “CBRE realized that there was a need to expand in late 2006 when we hired [Peter] Donovan and Ron [Halpern],” the spokesperson explains. Halpern, a 30-year veteran of the financial services and multihousing industries, will continue to assist in the oversight of the day-to-day operations of CBRE’s Multihousing Group while also spearheading the company’s HUD/FHA initiative. He will based in the Boston office and will be joined in this endeavor by two recent additions to the CBRE team: industry veterans Jayne Hulbert, who will be based in the San Francisco office and Thom Cooley out of Atlanta.