Whirlwind of Activity for Apollo Commercial

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Lobby of the DoubleTree by Hilton Times Square West

New York—Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance has been quite busy of late. The debt investments REIT recently closed four loan transactions worth a total of $325.5 million.

Talk about diversity, Apollo’s recent activities covered a lot of ground in terms of property types. Apollo provided a $105 million first mortgage loan secured by the brand-new, 612-key DoubleTree Times Square West hotel in Manhattan. The company financed another New York City asset, closing a $7.5 million first mortgage loan collateralized by a 6,500-square-foot retail property in Brooklyn. But it wasn’t all about the Big Apple.

Outside Washington, D.C., in Manassas, Va., Apollo completed an $80 million first mortgage loan secured by a data center that will soon get underway. Much of the property has already been pre-leased to a credit tenant under a long-term agreement. And with a 735,000-square-foot office building in Chicago as collateral, the REIT closed a $133 million first mortgage loan for the redevelopment of the tower into a mixed-use destination.

“Over the past few months, ARI built a strong pipeline of commercial real estate debt investments in anticipation of the approximately $400 million of investable capital the company generated from the acquisition of Apollo Residential Mortgage Inc. and the subsequent sale of AMTG assets. As a result, ARI had a very active September,” Scott Weiner, CIO of Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance Inc., said in a prepared statement.

There’s more. Apollo just entered into a master repurchase agreement with Deutsche Bank AG to provide a credit facility of as much as $300 million of advances related to the financing of first mortgage loans. The facility comes with a one-year term and the option for two one-year extensions. And the news just keeps on coming. Apollo also reported that over the last couple of months, loan repayments and condominium sales have yielded the REIT $122.9 million. To top it off, the company has also agreed to acquire Apollo Residential Mortgage for roughly $641 million, as previously reported by Commercial Property Executive.