Slate Property Group has partnered with The Carlyle Group to launch a new $750 million real estate lending company focused on the New York City market.
The platform is called SCALE Lending, and it will provide bridge and transitional loans to real estate sponsors and operators throughout the New York City area, according to Slate.
Carlyle is providing the majority of the $750 million, but Slate co-founder Martin Nussbaum declined to quantify the specific split between the two companies.
“I think that it’s a really good opportunity for us to have a group like them backing the business model,” he said. “It’s through the credit side of their company, so it’s really through their credit opportunity fund.”
SCALE Lending will target non-institutional developers that are typically shut out of traditional bank financing and also offer its clients in-house construction and development expertise.
“The deals we’re going to be really focusing on are going to be land loans, ground-up construction — both rental and condo — and condo inventory loans,” Nussbaum said. “I think that’s the space that we think we can add the most value.”
Aaron Appel and Mark Fisher of JLL put the joint venture together.
The new company is separate from SPG Capital Partners, a real estate lending platform that Slate launched earlier in the year to issue $500 million in mortgages. That company is only meant to originate senior mortgages.
Multiple developers have gotten into the lending game in recent years. Madison Realty Capital is prominent in both the lending and developing spaces, and Silverstein Properties just launched Silverstein Capital Partners to provide real estate loans earlier this year.
Slate recently received two large loans of its own for two of its outer borough projects: a $63 million loan from Deutsche Bank for an East Williamsburg rental they are developing with Adam America Real Estate at 120 Union Avenue and an $80 million loan from Mack Real Estate Credit Strategies for their Downtown Brooklyn project with Meadow Partners at 1 Flatbush Avenue.