Sabal Financial Picks Up $96M CRE Loan Portfolio

Sabal Financial CEO Pat Jackson

August has been quite a busy month for Sabal Financial Group L.P., which just added another commercial real estate loan portfolio to its holdings. The financial services firm acquired a $96 million collection of non-performing and performing loans from The Bank of the West.

The group of assets is located in California, Colorado, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Iowa and includes coveted land parcels.

“The Bank of the West portfolio was appealing to us because of its land holdings,” said Pat Jackson, CEO of Sabal. “There are barriers to entry and a general lack of development space, resulting in a constrained land supply, which will have higher values as the real estate market continues to recover. We have the luxury of being patient in working out these assets.”

Sabal has been on a bit of a buying spree of late. Last week, Sabal announced that it had purchased a $69 million loan from BB&T, with assets located in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Mid-August also brought the firm’s acquisition of a $121.5 million portfolio of 44 loans spanning states in the South, Southeast and Mid-West from a southeast-based regional bank.

“As a non-regulated entity, we can apply our real estate expertise and apply a patient, longer-term approach to garner value from this portfolio,” Jackson told CPE at the time. And Sabal kicked off the year with a bang, purchasing a $204 million portfolio of performing and non-performing loans–predominantly commercial and residential acquisition, development and construction loans–from the FDIC.

Presently, Sabal has approximately $4 billion in assets under management. This achievement has taken the firm only three years.