Monarch Alternative Capital LP, an investment firm with approximately $14 billion of assets under management, has continued the expansion of its real estate debt investment platform through recent customized debt financings for the Hotel 48LEX in New York City, Renaissance Las Vegas and Westin Tampa.
Monarch is leveraging its experience in commercial real estate debt across primary lending, secondary debt investments and structured credit to provide flexible financing solutions in large parts of the commercial real estate market impacted by volatile asset prices and a pullback in lending by commercial banks and other market participants, according to the company.
The three, separate transactions illustrate Monarch’s ability to source attractive opportunities for high-quality and well-positioned assets in off-market transactions. In Hotel 48LEX, a lifestyle hotel in New York City, Monarch provided a mortgage loan to a borrower operating under a compressed timeline to refinance a pending maturity. The opportunity allowed Monarch to invest in a supply-constrained market at a meaningful discount to replacement cost and to other lifestyle boutique hotel sales in New York City. For the Renaissance Las Vegas, Monarch financed a premier, off-strip, non-casino hotel directly adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center, providing a stable and recurring source of demand. Monarch’s most recent investment in the Westin Tampa, a full-service hotel on Harbour Island, similarly reflects an opportunity to lend against a high-quality property in an attractive and growing market.
Adam Sklar, Monarch’s co-head of real estate/co-portfolio manager, said, “The current lending environment strikes us as extraordinarily attractive driven by a few unique factors—reduced competition from traditional lenders such as regional banks, an impending mountain of commercial real estate debt maturities over the next three years, elevated interest rates and lending spreads—and yet operating fundamentals across most property types remain generally solid. We are advantageously positioned to provide flexible capital to help borrowers address their capital needs and growth initiatives.”