Commercial Mortgage and Real Estate
Mission
Ameritas Investment Partners commercial mortgage and real estate group invests client funds in high-quality commercial mortgage loans and in risk-appropriate equity real estate opportunities. Our objective for mortgage loan clients is to provide diversified and balanced portfolios that will give our clients attractive risk-adjusted returns. Our objective for equity real estate is to invest our clients’ capital in commercial real estate that will maximize cash flow and capital appreciation potential.
Products and Services
The commercial mortgage and real estate group offers the combination of long-term, fixed-rate financing and a user-friendly delivery process. Our interest rates are competitive, but most of our success is because of our process in committing, closing and servicing loans. We pride ourselves in being a fair, honest, open and flexible source of real estate loans. In addition, our clients benefit by obtaining yield spreads above industry standards.
Our conservative management style emphasizes self-amortizing mortgages. This approach aligns the interests of the borrower with those of the client/lender. Return of, rather than simple return on, capital is paramount.
Over the past seven years, we’ve originated more than $2.1 billion in commercial mortgages for our clients. These investments are secured by office buildings, warehouses, apartment communities, hotels and retail centers located throughout the United States. This strategy of diversification produces a well-balanced portfolio designed to be resistant to economic and real estate risks.
Strengths
Our greatest strength is our people. Our core group of seasoned professionals provide our clients with mortgage investments that satisfy their guidelines of size, price, location, borrower and property quality. Our results bear this out. We have built and managed client portfolios appropriately diversified geographically and by property type, providing above-market yields while limiting problem loan levels to a small fraction of the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) industry averages.
We market our mortgage program through a national network of carefully selected mortgage banking intermediaries. These long-established relationships have provided us with mortgage opportunities throughout the country and on a wide variety of property types. These firms provide us with local market expertise to augment our own experienced real estate professionals.
Opportunities in Commercial Mortgage Investments
At approximately $5.2 trillion, just over half the size of the U.S. corporate bond market, the U.S. commercial mortgage market is home to a variety of attractive investment opportunities.1 Commercial banks and life insurance companies hold the majority of U.S. private commercial mortgages. In the past, the substantial organizational infrastructure required to access and underwrite them has limited institutional investors’ ability to invest in this asset class. Today, new commercial mortgage investment vehicles are emerging every year, and the asset class is becoming more accessible to a broader range of investors. Also, as financial institutions become more familiar with the asset class, more options for leveraging commercial mortgage loan (CML) investments are becoming available. We believe this increased accessibility and familiarity has emerged at an opportune time, as many institutional investors, from public and private pension funds to foundations and endowments, remain under-allocated to the sector and are seeking income-oriented strategies.