NEW YORK CITY-After C-III Capital Partners surprised the CRE community by agreeing to acquire NAI Global earlier in the year, chairman and CEO Andrew Farkas is continuing to expand in the special servicing sphere by snatching up JER Partners’ CDO management businesses. JER, a private real estate investment management company, will merge its special servicing operations into C-III’s wholly owned subsidiary, C-III Asset Management LLC.
Under this acquisition, JER will act as special servicer for $35.5 billion of commercial real estate loans, of which $4 billion is currently under active management. C-III is now the special servicer for approximately 14,000 loans, with an aggregate balance in excess of $152 billion, of which $17 billion is currently in special servicing.
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Though the financial terms of the transaction with JER were not disclosed, Farkas says the transaction advances the company’s growth strategy and strengthens C-III’s position as one of the top three special servicers in the country. “Special servicing is a key foundation of our strategy to create a fully diversified commercial real estate company,” he says, in a statement.
In addition to this transaction and the recent NAI Global acquisition, C-III purchased Centerline Capital Group’s institutional real estate debt fund management and commercial mortgage loan servicing businesses in March 2010. In total, C-III has approximately $150 billion in assets in portfolio.
The deal is a sign that special servicing is on the rise. Sources previously told GlobeSt.com that other private equity firms first made strategic acquisitions within the commercial mortgage loan servicing business in early 2010, as the number of underperforming loans being transferred to the special servicers was steadily increasing.
Other recent examples of special servicing include the acquisition of Rockwood Advisors by Fortress, which aligned Rockwood’s investment sale platform with Fortress’ special servicing unit, CW Capital. Berkadia has formed an in-house brokerage team and LNR Partners has formed a loan advisory group, Archetype, which has participated in real estate auctions with Auction.com.
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