Mark Fogel, president and CEO of ACRES Commercial Realty Corp. (NYSE: ACR), said the past year has seen the mREIT lay the foundation for important future growth in the middle market lending space.
In a Nareit video interview, Fogel noted that through June 30, ACRES Commercial Realty (ACR) originated $660 million of loans. During the last year, the mREIT also executed on a collateral loan obligation (CLO) and raised about $111 of preferred equity.
“We’ve done a lot in a year and I think we’ve really set ourselves up to go forward, so the best is yet to come in my view. We really just laid the foundation in 2020 and 2021,” Fogel said.
ACR was formerly known as Exantas Capital Corp. The Exantas management contract was acquired by ACRES Capital Corp. last summer. ACRES Commercial Realty is externally managed by ACRES Capital LLC, a subsidiary of ACRES Capital.
Fogel explained that the idea in acquiring the Exantas management contract was to create a “one-stop shop” in the $10 million to $75 million loan space, such that once ACRES Capital’s construction development loans were completed, they could simply migrate to another portion of the company.
Fogel also discusses key goals of the company, including lowering its cost of capital, creating a permanent financing vehicle, and focusing on underserved asset classes.