The Ezralow Company-Owned Portfolio Includes 12 Self-Storage and 3 Industrial Properties; Best-Rate Allocations Confirm Strong Life Company Appetite for High Quality Commercial Mortgages
Los Angeles, Calif. (March 4, 2021) – Gantry, the largest independent commercial mortgage banking firm in the U.S., has secured a total of $364 million in long-term and best-rate financing, structured to meet the goals of The Ezralow Company (Ezralow) for 15 separate self-storage and industrial assets located in various California submarkets. The commercial mortgages were sourced from four separate life insurance companies, three of which are Gantry’s correspondent lenders.
Gantry’s Paige Serden, Senior Director, Peter Welsh, Principal, Braden Turnbull, Principal, and Josh Natker, Senior Associate, with the firm’s Los Angeles production office structured the long-term financings on behalf of Ezralow, a private real estate investment, development, and ownership company active across the spectrum of commercial real estate asset classes.
“High quality self-storage facilities have become a highly sought-after asset class for life and pension lenders over the past decade, and Gantry has developed an expertise in underwriting these properties with our roster of correspondent lenders,” said Gantry’s Serden. “There are several key factors of these specific properties that set them apart: They are located in strong in-fill geographic locations with barriers to entry, areas with dense demographics, and a first-rate management team. Over the past decade, lenders have learned to appreciate that when located strategically and managed correctly, self-storage assets perform well in both growth and recessionary economies, for different but parallel reasons in each cycle.”
The 12 Price Self Storage-operated Properties, encompassing 1.75 million square feet of total facility footprint, are situated in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Contra Costa Counties within strong local submarkets. The three industrial properties encompass approximately 428,000 square feet of multi-tenant space located in Southern California.
Ezralow CEO Bryan Ezralow remarked: “With the need for 15 separate but simultaneous loan fundings from multiple potential sources we looked to the Gantry team based on our longstanding relationships with the professionals involved and our confidence in their deep understanding of the life insurance company capital markets sector to obtain the optimal terms and execution for each asset. With smooth, timely and successful fundings on each property our confidence in the team was once again justified.”
According to Gantry’s Welsh, “We are now seeing an institutional discipline applied by both private and public operators to the self-storage asset class through portfolios of such properties operated at scale. It is a hybrid asset class that combines elements of industrial, multi-family and retail operative demands. When operators meet these demands with diligence and proper stewardship, self-storage assets offer strong, consistent returns across a spectrum of economic cycles, a fact now broadly recognized by the life and pension lender community and their best rate and term lending options.”
About Gantry
Gantry, a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco, is a full-service mortgage banking firm with an extensive lineup of correspondent lenders utilizing Gantry’s production, closing and servicing capabilities. Established in 1991, Gantry is currently staffed by nearly 90 professionals in regional offices throughout the western United States and in New York. The company’s national servicing platform, valued at nearly $17 billion, represents more than 2,000 loans located in 43 states. Gantry is rated as a Primary Servicer by Standard & Poor’s and is one of a select few non-banking/non-insurance chartered companies with this designation. For more information, please visit gantryinc.com.
