Berkshire Mortgage Finance

Real Estate Weekly, Oct 27, 1999

Freddie Mac announced that its Negotiated Transactions unit has closed a $62.8 million multifamily Gold PC Swap with Berkshire Mortgage Finance. The transaction involved the exchange of four fixed-rate mortgages originated by Berkshire for Equity Residential Properties Trust (EQR), a Chicago-based publicly traded real estate investment trust. The mortgages finance four properties, providing nearly 2,000 housing units in the state of Maryland.

"This transaction exemplifies the breadth of our securitization business," said H.L. Van Varick, vice president of Negotiated Transactions in Freddie Mac's Multifamily Division. "In a competitive market, our attention to service and creative structuring are what set us apart."

"This was a fairly complex refinancing because these properties had been part of a large acquisition, invoking a considerable amount of operating partnership units. As a result, EQR had some very specific structuring needs that Van Varick and his team at Freddie Mac were able to address with a great deal of creativity and flexibility," said David Neithercut, EQR's executive vice president and CFO.

"We were very pleased with Freddie Mac's response time and their ability to find a way to make this complicated deal work for everyone," said Kyle Draeger, assistant vice president at Berkshire.

Since the introduction of the Freddie Mac Program Plus network of multifamily loan originators and servicers in 1993, Freddie Mac has provided financing for nearly 5,000 multi-family properties totaling more than $17 billion.