Northmarq places $25.5M Freddie Mac loan on Lacey rental townhomes

Northmarq's Seattle debt and equity team arranged $25.5 million of acquisition financing for Chambers Reserve, a 125-unit rental townhome community in Lacey, Washington, with Freddie Mac providing the permanent, fixed-rate loan on a seven-year term; Robert Spiro and Ben Biggers led the placement.

The loan works out to about $204,000 a unit across 24 three-story buildings on 8.33 acres, roughly 15 units an acre. The three- and four-bedroom mix suggests renters who would otherwise be house shopping, and built in 2022, the community gives the underwriting operating history rather than a lease-up curve.

"Freddie Mac is showing a growing appetite for purpose-built rental communities in secondary markets, and Chambers Reserve checks that box," Spiro said, describing an asset new enough that comparable product is scarce for renters, in a market he called home to some of the state's most durable employers. Just off Interstate 5, five miles from downtown Olympia and minutes from the Hawks Prairie retail corridor, the site sits near Saint Martin's University, South Puget Sound Community College and The Evergreen State College.

The financing is a permanent agency placement at acquisition, with no bridge to refinance into a takeout and no floating-rate exposure to hedge. The $8.018 million unfunded forward against a Battle Creek workforce housing site that locks a takeout before construction starts is the other end of that execution. In the Mortgage Bankers Association's latest read, Fannie and Freddie multifamily delinquency under 1%, against 1.20% for bank books and 6.53% for CMBS.

Northmarq's own business has widened beyond placement. In September the firm bought a fund manager's recurring fee, a management contract rather than a single transaction, and a different kind of bet than arranging debt on somebody else's building.

One number is still absent from the public account. PWD's records show a $53 million Chambers Reserve deal closing on October 1, four days before this financing was reported; if that is the acquisition price, the loan would sit near half of the basis, though the coverage does not confirm that.