As interest rates keep going up, Arbor Realty Trust, a big player in lending for apartments, is doing a lot to help its borrowers. In the first three months of the year, they changed almost $1.9 billion in loans, as they told the Securities and Exchange Commission.
They’re doing this to help people who are having a hard time paying because of the higher interest rates.
They’re changing 39 loans for apartment buildings, doing things like extending when the loans have to be paid back, and giving borrowers a break on their interest rates for a while.
To get these changes, some borrowers had to pay part of what they owed, buy extra insurance for their rates, and save more money for possible repairs or to deal with higher rates later.
But even with all this, the extra money borrowers put in was only about 4% of what they owed, which makes some people wonder if these changes are enough to help them.
The reason Arbor is doing all this is because of how much interest rates have gone up. Many of the people who borrowed from Arbor got loans with interest rates that changed, thinking they were getting a good deal when rates were low.
However, when rates went up a lot in 2022, it made things tough for them, as they now have to pay much more for their loans each month.
By the end of March, Arbor had about $465 million in loans that weren’t being paid back on time, which is a lot more than at the end of 2023. If they hadn’t made these changes to the loans, it would have been almost $957 million, showing how important it is what Arbor is doing.
One thing Arbor is doing to manage its loans is using something called collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). These are financial things where loans are turned into investments and sold to people who want them.
Arbor can use CLOs to take away loans that aren’t being paid back and put in ones that are. This has helped Arbor keep making money, even though a company called Viceroy Research has said Arbor has a lot of loans that aren’t being paid back on time.
Arbor has been working hard to keep things going well, and in the first three months of this year, they made $57.9 million in profit.
