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June 16, 2008

Austin Area Ripe for Development

Hackensack, NJ, June 16, 2008 – Consistent with its reputation for making substantial loans to borrowers throughout the United States, Hackensack-based Kennedy Funding, Inc. announces the closing of a $12.5 million loan to Potranco Limited, LP, a Texas development partnership of Alex Chambers, president and CEO of Blackhawk Development, Austin, and Chip Field.

Potranco will use the loan toward purchasing a 173.56 land tract in Bexar County, TX, in a rapidly developing area that is actually within the jurisdiction of San Antonio. The area – referred to as the “donut hole,” and previously held by the State of Texas General Land Office – had previously been sold at auction but Potranco was able to secure the option when the original purchase fell through.

“This was an excellent turn of events for Potranco in the economic sense,” says Jeffrey Wolfer, president and Co-CEO of Kennedy Funding. “This specific parcel is in the middle of an area with open zoning and just perfect for the kind of mixed-use development that the company envisions. “ Read More »

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June 3, 2008

Hackensack, NJ, June 03, 2008 – Imagine a collection of retreat homes on one to five acres waiting to be built in a North Carolina mountain-ridge setting. Imagine the frustration of developers waiting for a loan from traditional lenders in order to make this a reality. That is what increasingly faces today’s building sector and that is why High Grove Development Group, LLC (Legasus Properties, LLC), turned to Hackensack’s direct lender Kennedy Funding, Inc. for borrowing needs.

Kennedy recently closed on a $9.54 million loan to High Grove whose principals are Robert A. Corliss and Theodore C. Morlok. Based in North Carolina, High Grove plans a 500-acre upscale community – High Grove Estates – at the foothills of the fabled Great Smokey Mountain range. They needed a loan in a short amount of time to proceed with work on 91 lots in the first phase of the development that will set the stage for another 85 lots to be developed eventually. The good news is that 13 of the first 91 homesites already have buyers. The difficult news was that the traditional loan was not forthcoming.

Kennedy was able to provide the funds in short order. On the same day as the High Grove closing, the same developers closed with Kennedy on a $20.5 million loan for their River Rock community 40 miles to the south in Cashiers, NC. Both communities are a short drive from major North Carolina cities and from Atlanta. Read More »

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June 1, 2008

Hackensack, NJ, June 01, 2008 – MOA Hospitality, Inc. owns 33 national brand- affiliated, one- to three-star hotels across the United States, which it operates and/or leases to operators under lease/purchase programs. MOA’s focus is on limited service brands, including Best Western, Comfort Inn, Days Inn, Fairfield Inn and Suites, Howard Johnson, Microtel, Ramada Limited, Super 8, and Travelodge. Their hotel properties are located in 19 states, covering an area from Ellsworth, Maine, to Orlando, Florida, to Los Angeles, California, to Spokane, Washington.

MOA has a good relationship with the American public, making new customers of travelers literally every month of the year. They also have a good relationship with their lender, having received two loans from them in 2007 for restructuring and investment purposes. Putting some of their many properties up as collateral, MOA borrowed a total of $10.8 million, and each of the two loans proceeded expeditiously.

If was therefore natural that, when MOA was in the market for a third loan, they should contact the lender who had closed the first two, the lender with whom they were establishing a strong lender-repeat client bond … the lender named Kennedy Funding. Read More »

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May 12, 2008

Wintdots of St. Thomas Using $6.5 Million to Develop ‘Green’ Community

HACKENSACK, N.J., May 12, 2008 – High above Charlotte Amalie Harbor in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Wintdots Development, LLC is planning an 80-unit luxury community in five buildings. What makes Flagberry Hill unique is the developer’s commitment to the environment. The community will be the first in the region to be fully powered by wind and solar energy, according to Wintdots Principals Glenn and Dorothy Elskoe.

What Wintdots needed was a bridge loan to span the time until its traditional lender acted on second loan processing. What Wintdots really needed was a direct lender like Kennedy Funding, Inc., the Hackensack-based company known in the industry for its ability to accurately assess the viability of potential clients’ visions and to help put these visions on the map.

“What we saw in our evaluation that led to our decision to fund this company was a solid organization offering collateral in a vacation destination that could only appreciate in value,” says Jeffrey Wolfer, Kennedy Co-CEO. He says that the Elskoes collateralized their loan by combining almost 22 acres of raw property on which the community will stand in the island’s South Side District 4 with a commercial building they own in Charlotte District 1. Read More »

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May 5, 2008

Almost $40 Million in Domestic and Offshore Aid for Land Development and Restructuring

Hackensack, NJ, May 5, 2008 – In a lending environment where securing a loan is increasingly out of reach for borrowers, April 16 proved momentous for Hackensack-based Kennedy Funding, Inc. The direct private lending company closed four loans that day, three for land development and one for financial restructuring, totaling almost $40 million.

North Carolina’s Legasus Properties LLC borrowed over $30 million for the development of two upscale Smoky Mountain communities. In St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, Wintdots Development needed $6.5 million to create a vacation community overlooking the Charlotte Amalie harbor and the fourth loan, a $1.5 million restructuring deal went to MOA Properties LLC, a hospitality company with moderately priced accommodations. Read More »

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April 28, 2008

Biloxi, Mississippi – Peter A. Simon of West D’Iberville Development, LLC had a dream. He’d had it for a very long time. And he had methodically gone about making it happen.

Simon scouted the Biloxi, Mississippi market for several years, looking for a site to build a casino complex. He knew the Gulf Coast region was perfect for such an establishment, and he was determined to become a part of it. Finally, after patiently but relentlessly pulling things together, he had assembled 36 individual parcels into one 16.3-acre plot. It was a water-view site on the north side of the Back Bay in D’Iberville, just 2.5 miles north of the heart of the casino action in Biloxi. It was worth waiting and working for. It was perfect. And, to top it off, he had gotten site approval from the Mississippi Gaming Commission to build his casino.

Now, if only he could find a loan to get things up and running, he could let the games begin. And he wasn’t about to gamble when the fruition of his dream was literally within reach. So he went with a sure thing, and called Kennedy Funding.

Kennedy Funding, headquartered in Hackensack, New Jersey, is one of the largest direct private lenders in the industry. Since 1987, Kennedy has been known as the lender who can deliver the two most important commodities to a borrower: speed and flexibility. Borrowers can receive a commitment in mere hours, a closed loan in just days, and amounts from $1 million up to $100 million and more. Kennedy is also known in the industry as the lender who doesn’t shy away from the tough, problematic, or complex deals. In fact, they have successfully completed so many of them that it is said Kennedy can close transactions that other lenders won’t even consider. Read More »

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April 3, 2008

HACKENSACK, N.J., April 3, 2008 – Kennedy Funding, Inc., a leading direct private lender, has closed a $3.9 million loan to Mills Farm, LLC, of Delaware. The Mills Family, through Mills Farm, LLC, owns four individual tracts of farmland in Milford, Sussex, and Kent counties in Delaware, totaling 631.6 acres. One of the tracts is a working farm operated by the family, with a farmhouse, barn, accessory buildings, and grazing dairy cattle on 215 acres. The other three tracts are raw, undeveloped farmland, and one of them has entitlements for residences to be built.

The Mills family was looking for a loan. They intended to use the loan proceeds to settle and/or pay down some debt, consolidate some other expenses, and conduct further farm business. Their intent was to use the four farming tracts as collateral, but they were unsure of their value in a market that had dropped precipitously in the past 18 months. And they had been hearing for some time that ‘no one was making loans in today’s market.’ Read More »

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April 1, 2008

HACKENSACK, N.J., April 2, 2008 – Kennedy Funding, Inc., a leading direct private lender, has purchased a loan to The Enclave at Bay Isles, LLC in Longboat Key, Florida. The Enclave at Bay Isles, LLC had purchased a 3.78-acre piece of land which had an enormous amount of potential. The land was vacant and adjacent to an existing shopping center containing a Publix Supermarket and CVS Center, among other businesses. The Enclave had several options, including developing the land into a mixed-use parcel, improving and selling the property to an interested buyer, or simply holding onto it and eventually selling it when the appreciation had reached an acceptable level.

Unfortunately, none of the above happened. After purchasing the property for $3.25 million, and spending an additional $750,000 for entitlements and improvements, things slowed down to a crawl and, eventually, to a complete standstill. There were no more improvements made. There was no development begun. There were no buyers of interest. There were also no loan payments being sent. Finally, the Enclave’s loan went into default. And there was seemingly no way out of a situation steadily getting worse – and accruing interest at 11% per annum.

Things had never looked bleaker for The Enclave. Fortunately, there was someone who specialized in turning bleakness into brightness.

That someone was Kennedy Funding. Read More »

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Hackensack, New Jersey – Jeff Johnson of Extra Land Co., LLC owned a piece of land free and clear. It was 31.76 acres in Obetz, Ohio, a southeastern Columbus suburb. The land itself was vacant, with a slight gradient down to the road, and covered mostly in tall, waving grasses. It was, in Johnson’s mind, just waiting for something. And he believed he knew exactly what that was.

Johnson planned to develop the land into a semi-detached, single-family community, with 204 single-family units divided between 189 duplex and 56 triplex buildings. There would be five single-story models offered, ranging from 1,285 square feet up to 1,557 square feet, with up to three bedrooms. There would also be a 2,000 square foot club house in the development with all the latest amenities. And Johnson knew his target audience: first-time buyers and retired couples who were looking to down-size in their later years. He also knew it would be the perfect community for both, with costs ranging from $140,000 to $170,000 – prices almost too good to be true in our current residential doldrums.

Johnson had it all figured out, save for one tiny detail. Even though he owned the land free and clear, he needed a loan to cover the development costs, and his only collateral was the raw land itself. Which is perhaps why his finding Kennedy Funding also ended up being a perfect fit. Read More »

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February 13, 2008

Sponsorship Proceeds Will Benefit The Leslie Simon Breast Care Center at Englewood Hospital, and Nyack Hospital

HACKENSACK, N.J., February 13, 2008 – John McEnroe, former World No. 1 player, will make his highly anticipated debut in The Kennedy Funding Invitational for 2008, July 9 – 13. The Kennedy Funding Invitational is a benefit tournament for two area hospital breast care centers. Co-Directors James Miller, Mitch Klein, and Kevin Wolfer have put together one of the finest competitions in the U.S., which will feature top competitors from around the world who are ranked in the ATP top 100 – including last year’s Invitational winner Michael Russell, Justin Gimelstob, Robbie Ginepri, Sam Querrey and others. Also featuring a special appearance by former tennis great Aaron Krickstein in a celebrity doubles match.

2008 is the third year of the annual Kennedy tournament, which is becoming recognized by pundits and fans alike as one of the pre-eminent tennis events of the year in the New York Metro area. Proponents involved in the fight against breast cancer see it as a welcome venue for donated funding. 2007’s Invitational resulted in over $625,000 being donated to the breast care centers at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey and Nyack Hospital in New York. The legendary Pete Sampras, former Men’s #1 player, came to the tournament to play an exhibition Celebrity match against Justin Gimelstob and said, “I’m happy to be a part of it. I’m happy to help. Breast cancer is something that’s been a part of my family. It’s a tough disease, and I’m just happy to help out a little bit and play a little tennis.” The crowd was delighted to see Sampras, and cheered wildly while he was on the court. All tickets for the Sampras Celebrity match were spoken for long before day of the event. Read More »