New York Life beats the borrower’s bank on $53.5M storage loan

Connect CRE reports that Talonvest Capital arranged $53.5 million of life-insurance-company financing for Investec Real Estate Companies, whose three California self-storage properties span 1,818 units and 243,496 net rentable square feet in Highland, Goleta and Murrieta. The loan runs five years, full-term interest-only, with no cash management requirements, and an early rate lock protected the borrower from rate increases before closing. Talonvest’s Andrew Marshall, Kim Bishop, Mason Brusseau and Lauren Maehler negotiated a 15-basis-point improvement, roughly $400,000 in interest savings over the loan’s life. The pricing and structure also outperformed a competing proposal from the borrower’s existing banking relationship, the private wealth division of a national money-center bank.

Kenny Slaught, president of Investec Real Estate Companies, told Connect CRE the loan exceeded expectations, and the life company is New York Life, the lender named in this publication’s earlier report on the same refinancing.

The amount works out to roughly $29,000 a unit, a price that treats storage as bond-like income rather than construction risk. Full-term interest-only does the heavier lifting: no principal amortizes across five years, so the full $53.5 million comes back to the table at maturity. The $400,000 in interest savings is real, but it sits small next to the question of where a five-year rate lands when the loan comes due.

The maturity date will test whether life companies still want full-term IO on storage at that point, and the bank in this deal has just seen what it is competing against. A private wealth relationship did not match the insurer’s 15-basis-point gap or its clean structure. For self-storage credit, the New York Life term sheet is now the benchmark.