Developer Craig Hall’s structured finance arm to book $1B by next year

Developer Craig Hall‘s structured finance arm closed on two loans totaling $42 million in California, putting Hall Structured Finance on track to have $1 billion on its balance sheets by the end of next year.

The structured finance division of Dallas-based Hall Group will help finance, in part, the development of two Cambria Suites hotels in Sonoma County and Napa Valley, California.

This deal is the latest for the busy lender that plans to close on $150 million in loans in the next 30 days, Mike Jaynes, president of Hall Structured Finance, told the Dallas Business Journal.

“It’s good to be an unregulated direct lender right now focused on construction financing,” Jaynes said. “There’s not a lot of competition and it’s hard to build a capital stack for hotels and other product types.”

Along with hotels, Hall Structured Finance also financed deals on ground-up Class A apartments, student housing, condominiums and speculative office development throughout the United States. Without many loan options for developers, Jaynes said his team sees plenty of projects in need of financing.

Hall Structured Finance’s loans are typically part of a larger capital stack for a development.

Scott Silver of Hospitality Funding Inc. and Silver & Associates LLC brokered the two California hotel loans on behalf of the developer, Stratus Development Partners. The loans will help kick off construction next month on the two projects.

Jaynes said Hall Structured Finance plans to have $500 million of loans on its books by year-end, with $1 billion on its balance sheet by the end of 2018.

“It won’t be easy, but it’s very achievable for us,” he said. “There is a need out there and we plan to continue to finance deals.”

Jaynes said he believes there’s a window of opportunity for Hall Structure Finance through next year.

“There will be a blip at some point in the future, like everything else this runs in cycles,” he said. “But we are careful in what we finance and we like where we are in the capital stack.”

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