The Orange-based firm has been buying distressed mortgage assets since 2007. "There's a tremendous opportunity out there, that's for sure," says Michael Castanon, a managing partner with the firm.
The housing downturn, the credit crisis, the lack of liquidity, "It's the perfect storm essentially," Castanon adds. "We're seeing really an unprecedented amount of distressed assets that are coming to the market."
Fasthold's services include: mortgage loan acquisition solutions that provide capital to companies with distressed assets; advisory services for liquidation of those distressed assets; and asset-servicing solutions to assist homeowners.
"We're fitting into a spot to align ourselves with the cycle of the market," Castanon says.Principals and co-founders of Fasthold include Michael Castanon, John Liebgott and John Duden. The $300 million in capital comes from two privately held commercial real estate mortgage opportunity funds based in California, which Castanon declined to name. The funds were provided as an investment into the company and they are to be "deployed specifically for the investment into distressed assets," he adds.
The funds were committed at the end of May, and the funding agreement was signed last week, according to Castanon. Fasthold's existing funds are comprised of capital raised from private investors, credit institutions and its own founders.
The company says it's currently bidding on portfolios ranging from $1 million to $150 million, largely residential properties, but also several commercial assets including strip malls, and class A and class B properties.
"There's a tremendous amount of assets that are coming out of Nevada, California, the Southwest region--those areas that were experiencing overheated appreciation," says Castanon, who sees the market for acquiring distressed assets as a long-lived one. He adds, "If this were to be compared to a baseball game, I would say that we're in the second inning right now."
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