Arbor Realty Trust

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Your meeting is about to begin. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first quarter 2026 Arbor Realty Trust earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this period, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you want to remove yourself from the queue, please press star 2. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you should need operator assistance, please press star 0. I'd like to now turn the call over to your speaker today, Paul Eliano, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the quarterly earnings call for our Realty Trust. This morning we'll discuss the results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. With me on the call today is Ivan Kaufman, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, I need to inform you that statements made in this earnings call may be deemed forward-looking statements that are subject to risk and uncertainties, including information about possible or assumed future results of our business, financial condition, liquidity, results of operations, plans, and objectives. These statements are based on our beliefs, assumptions, and expectations of our future performance, taking into account the information currently available to us. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from ARBA's expectations in these forward-looking statements are detailed in our SEC reports. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today. ARBA undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after today or the occurrences of unanticipated events. I'll now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Ivan Kostman. Thank you, Paul, and thanks to everyone for joining on today's call. As you're all aware, our stock has been subject to attacks by short sellers in recent years. Some of those short reports appear to have provoked investigative interest from regulators, as well as class actions and derivative claims from plaintiff's law firms. We have steadfastly maintained that these attacks and claims they made against us were baseless and misleading. We are pleased to report in that regard that we believe that any pending investigations that were initiated in the wake of the short reports have now been closed without any action against us. Additionally, and very recently, our motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit against us was granted, and the claim is dismissed without prejudice. We were very pleased with these developments. Although our management team never lost sight of our shareholders and their interest during this challenging period, we are happy to put this chapter behind us and to focus on creating shareholder value free of these costly and unwarranted distractions. On our last earnings call, we discussed at length We feel we are at the bottom of the cycle and have drink-fenced the majority of our non-performing and sub-performing loans and are working exceedingly hard at accelerating the resolution of these loans into performing assets, which will allow us to start to build back our run rate of interest and income for the future. This is our top priority as these loans are having a tremendous drag on our earnings. We also mentioned that if rates went down, the process would accelerate, and if rates increased, it would lead to a longer period of time needed to resolve these loans. Unfortunately, given the geopolitical landscape, the 5 and 10-year have actually increased roughly 50 basis points in the first quarter, which is certainly pushing our timetable out a little bit. Despite these challenges, we continue to make progress in working through our assets, and again, we believe we have a clear line of sight on resolving the bulk of these assets over the next several quarters. We ended the first quarter with approximately $500 million in delinquencies and around $500 million of REO assets, for a total non-performing assets of roughly $1 billion. These numbers are down approximately $100 million from the last quarter, or a 9% reduction. This is steady progress, and again, our goal is to continue to accelerate the resolution of our non-interest earning assets and redeploy the capital into performing loans and draw a run rate of income. We had 200 million of new delinquencies in the first quarter and 300 million of resolutions, which is consistent with our goal of continuing to shrink our total delinquencies each quarter. Additionally, we have line of sight on roughly another 200 to 300 million of delinquencies we expect to resolve in the second and third quarter. In addition to another 100 million, we believe we have the potential to resolve by the end of the year. We also remain optimistic that we can reduce our REO assets to around $250 to $300 million by the end of 2026, even after adding an additional $100 million of REO assets over the next few quarters, which were already reflected in our delinquency numbers in March 31. We have been actively marketing several of these assets for sale, which will go a long way towards helping reduce the drag on earnings and increase our run rate of income for the future. As we discussed in detail in our last quarter, we continue to focus heavily on our legacy portfolio, which currently sits at approximately $5 billion. $500 million of e-walls are delinquent that we're working through very aggressively, and $1.5 billion continue to perform in accordance with their original terms. The other $3 billion have been modified to paint a few features of continue to make progress in reducing the amount of accrued interest outstanding on certain loans by resetting the rates to today's market spreads and requiring that the borrowers pay down a large portion of the outstanding accrued interest as part of the modified terms. In fact, we are currently working on several loans totaling approximately $400 million, and we think we can modify in the second and third quarter that will result in receiving approximately $19 million in backer food interest and reducing the loans outstanding in the food interest down to around $1.1 billion. This is a very effective strategy that will also put these loans in a much better position to cover our debt service from property operations and is resulting in improved terms from our line lenders. This, combined with having the proper guarantees and requiring the borrowers to commit significant additional capital to support their deals, gives us comfort about how these loans will perform going forward and will greatly limit the potential risk of future losses. As Paul will discuss in more detail, the first quarter. Clearly, our earnings are being greatly affected by the significant drag from our non-interest earning assets, as well as from resetting legacy loans to today's market rates. This is something we believe we will improve on in the next several quarters. We continue to make progress in resolving our legacy issues and grow our business volumes. Our first quarter numbers were also affected, as we expected, and normally slow start in the agency business from the seasonal nature of that platform, which was also impacted by the increase in rates. On the last call, we mentioned that we would continue to evaluate our dividend policy based on how quickly we think we could resolve our delinquent loans and sub-performing loans and reduce that drag on earnings. With the recent increase in rates, as well as the expectation that rates can continue to remain volatile, we are now predicting a slightly longer timeline in resolving these loans. As a result, the Board has decided to reset our quarterly dividend to $0.17 a share. We believe this is a dividend we will be able to cover from earnings for the rest of the year and the potential for growth in the later part of the year and in 2027 as we work aggressively to reduce the earnings grade from our legacy assets and improve our run rate of interest income. We also believe it is very prudent in this current environment to retain our capital to fund the growth of our platform and to buy back stock where appropriate, which generates strong risk-adjusted returns on our investment. Turning now to the production numbers for the first quarter and in our different business lines. In our agency platform, we originated $708 million in volume. in addition to our first CNPS brokerage transaction of $88 million of the total first quarter volume of $795 million. These numbers were in line with our previous guidance as we normally experience the light of first quarter due to the seasonal nature of the business. Despite the challenging rate environment, we are seeing an influx of new opportunities that are increasing our current pipeline significantly. We're off to a good start for quarter two with $350 million of volume closed through the first week of May, and we still feel we can produce similar volumes as last year and a strong second half of the year, which is obviously great for pendants. In our balance sheet lending business, we originated $400 million of volume in the first quarter. This business continues to be incredibly competitive, and as a result, We are being highly selective and are focusing our attention on large deals with high-quality sponsors. The bridge lending business is a very important part of our overall strategy as it generates long-term returns on our capital in the short term while continuing to build up a pipeline into future agency deals. And with the significant efficiency we continue to see in the securitization market, And with our line lenders, we were able to produce strong returns on our capital despite the competitive landscape. In fact, in the first quarter, we issued another CLO with very attractive pricing and terms. We priced the deal at 1.73 over and 88% leverage with a two-and-a-half-year replenishment feature. This was an incredible accomplishment, especially in light of the fact that we priced the deal during the height of the Iranian conflict. We continue to have access to this market and are a leader in this space, which allows us to finance our new originations with non-recourse, non-block-the-market debt, and drive higher returns on our capital. In our single-family rental business, we experienced a mutually slow start to the year, which was primarily driven by the noise surrounding the housing bill that is being considered. This bill and its current focus The current form, surprisingly, does not have a full carve-out for the built-in rent business as initially expected and definitely keeps folks on the sidelines due to this uncertainty. There's been a tremendous amount of talk lately that this bill will not get passed in its current form and will be serious considerations to building in the appropriate carve-outs for the built-in rent business, including removing the forced sale provisions in year seven that currently exist in the proposed legislation. Things are starting to loosen up now that people believe this will occur. We expect to see a real uptick in our new originations in this platform going forward. We originated at approximately $125 million in the first quarter and expect we will see a significant increase in e-volume numbers over the next few quarters. This is a great business as it offers us returns on our capital through construction, bridge, and permanent lending opportunities and generates strong leverage returns in the short term while providing significant long-term benefits by further diversifying our income streams. In our construction lending business, we continue to see our share of high quality. We closed one deal for $113 million in the first quarter and are expected to close another $250 million in the second quarter. And our pipeline continues to grow each day, give us comfort and ability to hit our target of between $750 million and $1 billion in production in 2026. In summary, we are laser-focused on resolving our legacy book as quickly as possible, which will reduce the significant drag that these assets are having on our earnings. We believe we have a clear path to resolving the majority of the assets over the next several quarters, which will set us off nicely and build our earnings base heading into 2027. We also continue to focus on growing the many different verticals we have and generate forward tons on our capital that are being enhanced by the significant improvements and efficiencies we continue to create on the right side of our balance sheet. We will continue to work exceedingly hard to the bottom of this cycle, and as always, we remain focused on maximizing shareholder value. I will now turn the call over to Paul to take you through the financial results. Thank you, Ivan. In the first quarter, we produced shibble earnings of $37.4 million, or 18 cents per share, excluding one-time realized losses of $23 million in the revolution of certain delinquent and REO assets. On our last quarter earnings call, we guided to around $10 million in realized losses in Q1, all of which we had previously reserved for. We had some success resolving some loans ahead of schedule, resulting in an additional $13 million in losses in Q1, We will continue to do our best to give guidance on expected resolutions, although it is a very fluid process and often hard to predict the exact timing of these resolutions. Having said that, our best estimate is a range of approximately 15 to 25 million of realized losses a quarter for the balance of the year that we will continue to reserve for as we receive more price discovery on these assets. As Ivan mentioned, our first quarter numbers were in line with our expectations, especially given the light first quarter we usually experience in our agency business. We also expect it will take a little longer to work through our legacy book given the current rate environment, which will likely keep our earnings in a similar range for the next few quarters before we start to see an increase in our run rate towards the end of the year as we reduce the drag on our earnings from our underperforming assets. This should put us in a position to start to show growth in our earnings in 2027 as we realize the full benefit of converting our delinquent assets into performing loans. With that said, the second and third quarters of this year are likely to be our low watermark and hover around 17 cents a share as we continue to reset certain sub-performing loans to lower rates that will affect our earnings run rate for the next few quarters. We do expect this number to grow in the fourth quarter with further upside potential in 2027, as we're working diligently to resolve nearly all of our non-performing assets over the next several quarters. We're estimating the second quarter will actually come in around 15 cents a share, as there is roughly 2 cents a share of unusual drag from some inefficiencies related to our financing costs that are resulting in a temporary overlap of interest for a few months. This includes the $100 million ramp feature in our new CLO that we expect to be able to fully utilize by the end of May, and the timing of redrawing on our repo lines to pay off our 4.5% unsecured notes last week as we used some of the proceeds from the December bond issuance to temporarily pay down higher-cost repo debt until the April notes came due. And given the non-recurring nature of this expense, combined with the expectation that we will resolve the bulk of our delinquent loans by the end of the year, we believe we'll be able to start to grow our earnings in the fourth quarter with additional upside expected in 2027 as well. In the first quarter, we recorded an additional $12.5 million of impairment on our REO book to properly mark these assets to where we think we can effectuate a sale. We have engaged brokers to sell the bulk of these REO assets quickly and create interest earning loans for the future. As Ivan mentioned, we're expecting to take back roughly another 100 million of assets as we work to the bottom of the cycle, 50 to 75 million of which will likely happen by the end of the second quarter. Most of these assets are already reflected in our delinquent numbers. And again, we are working very diligently to dispose of these assets quickly with an estimated 100 to 150 million of sales scheduled in the second quarter and another 2 to 250 million expected in the third and fourth quarter. This should put our REO assets between 250 and 300 million by the end of 26 and greatly improve our run rate of income for the future. We also booked another $9 million of specific reserves on our balance sheet loan book, the total REO impairment and specific reserves of $21.5 million in the first quarter. We expect to book similar level of reserves and impairments over the next few quarters, which is consistent with our strategy of accelerating the resolution of problem loans as we look to mark certain loans that we are marketing for disposition to where we think we can execute a sale. In our GSE agency business, we originated $708 million in volume and had $671 million in loan sales in the first quarter. The margins on these loans were very healthy at 1.86% this quarter compared to 1.36% last quarter, which was mostly due to a shift in product mix and loan size with some larger deals in Q4 that contained lower margins. We also recorded $10 million of mortgage servicing rights, income related to $734 million of committed loans in the first quarter, representing an average MSR rate of 1.32%. Our fee-based servicing portfolio of $36.3 million on March 31st with a weighted average servicing fee of 35.5 basis points and an estimated remaining life of six years and will continue to generate a predictable annuity of income going forward of around $129 million gross annually. In our balance sheet lending operation, our investment portfolio was $12 billion on March 31st, with an all-in yield on that portfolio of 7.03% compared to 7.08% at December 31st. This was mainly due to resetting rates on certain legacy loans and from the slight decline in SOFR. The average balance in our core investments was $12.04 billion this quarter compared to $11.84 billion last quarter in the full effect of our fourth quarter growth. The average yield of these assets increased to 7.5% from 7.38% last quarter, mainly due to significantly more back interest and default interest collected in Q1 on loan resolutions, which was partially offset by a decline in SOFA in the first quarter. Total debt on our core assets was approximately $10.7 billion at March 31st. The only cost of debt was approximately 6.4% at 3-31 versus 6.45% at 12-31, mainly due to a reduction so far, along with a lower rate on our new CLO issuance in March. The average balance in our debt facilities was approximately $10.4 billion for the first quarter, compared to $10.1 billion in the fourth quarter, mainly due to funding our fourth quarter growth and from a full quarter of the new unsecured debt issued in December of last year. The average cost of funds in our debt facilities was 6.52% in the first quarter, down from 6.66% for the fourth quarter, excluding interest expense from leveraging our REO assets, the debt balance of which is separately stated in our balance sheet, and therefore not included in our total debt on core assets. This decrease was partially offset by the unsecured debt we issued in December. And our overall spot net interest spreads were flat at 0.63% at both March 31st and December 31st. So in summary, we continue to make steady progress in resolving our delinquencies and are extremely focused on completing the process as quickly as possible, which will significantly reduce the drag on our earnings. This combined with growing our origination platforms will go a long way towards allowing us to increase our run rate of income in 2027. That completes our prepared remarks for this morning. I'll now turn it back to the operator to take any questions you may have at this time. Stephanie?

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press star 2. So others can hear your question clearly, we ask you pick up your handset for best sound quality. We'll take our first question from Jay Grimani with KBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you very much. Could you comment on the outlook for SFR originations picking up? And also, if you can give any color on the types of borrowers that you are dealing with, you know, the number of properties they hold, what their intended hold period is, and how the financing terms from counterparties are changing, you know, the cap rates and return profile of that business.

Can you repeat the first part of that question? It didn't come to me clearly.

Yeah, sorry about that. Could you comment on the outlook for the single family for rent originations business? If you could provide some color on the types of borrowers you're dealing with, you know, whether they're institutional or whether they're smaller, number of properties they hold and their hold period. Just about your comments regarding the housing legislation and how that's changing that business.

Sure. Let me respond to that thought first. Let's talk about the legislation, because I think the business got frozen a little bit initially with the concern and the fear. But the consensus now, a very strong consensus, We've seen a real momentum over the last couple of weeks in that business. I think we've already up $200 million, and we expect to exceed $300 million per quarter. So we're back in line and back in pace, and the enthusiasm is back in the business. Most of the people we're dealing with, a lot of their investors are institution-based, A lot of them have anywhere between, you know, 5 and 30 assets. That seems to be the typical profile of what we're dealing with. Some have high net worth families, but a lot of them are institutional based. If you can go to the second part of the question. I think it was cap rates, returns, and how we're seeing the financing side of that business, which I think has been really strong. Yeah, listen, the credit markets are extremely aggressive now, and the cap rates are very aggressive. It's a very, very well... a lot of momentum in the business. So it's filled you very, very, very, very favorably. And anything that's completed and goes to a bridge loan is priced extraordinarily competitively. And the agencies, Penny and Freddie, as well as the CNBS market, they love this product.

Great. Thanks for that. And that's really good to hear in terms of the resiliency of that asset class. Just turning to the outlook on credit, I think you touched on it that the five and 10 year move this year is kind of slowing the pace of resolution. But my main question would be if there's any new delinquencies or new defaults you would expect as a result of where the five and 10 year, I imagine that there's at least some cohort of borrowers that have been kind of on the fence as to what they're going to do and the outlook for rates makes a huge difference in their consideration. So you could just comment on how the five- and 10-year move this year has affected the credit outlook.

Well, I think, you know, it's very clear from management's standpoint that, you know, we've taken a look at the change in the rate environment. And in the fourth quarter, we clearly had a drop in rates, and there was a lot of liquidity. enthusiasm and now with the iran situation and rising rates and with the approach that rates will remain a little bit higher we've adjusted our philosophy we're getting ahead of where we think the market is and that's why we've uh you know adjusted our dividend to reflect more difficult environment we don't want to be sitting here in the second and third quarter making the adjustments we think that this rate environment is going to slow the resolutions it's going to slow it's going to slow, you know, where these resolutions go. And, in fact, as Paul has guided in his comments, we're expecting to continue to have reserves going in the second, third, and fourth quarter, and it's reflective of where this new environment is. So we've made the adjustments. I'm not sure everybody else has, but we do think that this new rate environment is going to affect the balance of the year, and that's what we're reflecting on our comments.

Thanks for taking the questions.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Chris Mueller with Citizens Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I was having some connection issues, so apologies if you already hit on some of this. But looking at originations in the bridge portfolio, average loan size looked to be about $128 million versus $38 million in the fourth quarter. And I think Ivan touched on this a little bit, but was this more opportunistic, or are you guys intentionally moving up the loan size spectrum, and we should expect to see more of this going forward?

Well, I think it's a great question, and we are definitely going in a larger loan size, but the market's extremely, extremely competitive. And, you know, it's to the point where on each individual loan, you have to make certain credit decisions in order to bring those loans on. So we've chosen to go to larger sponsor, larger deals, and be more selective in that sense, to put more management attention on each and every loan that we do. And the larger loans gives us the ability to do that.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. And then I guess gain on sale margin stepped up quite a bit in the quarter to 1.86 from 1.36. Can you just remind me if there was a large deal in 4Q numbers or is something else driving that dynamic?

No, that's exactly right. So a couple of things happened. If you go back and look at our margins, you may want to go back and look at 3Q, 4Q, and even 2Q of last year. If you look at 1Q and 2Q of last year, the margins were actually very strong. Similar, 186 is a very healthy margin. We did 170, I think we did 175 in the first quarter of last year, 170, I think, in the second quarter of last year. Then in the third and fourth quarter, you saw that dip of 115 and 136. So in the fourth quarter and third quarter, we had some really large off-market deals that we were able to get over the line. And we also had a lot more Freddie Mac business in the fourth quarter, which is a different type of business. In the first quarter, we had a lot more Fannie Mae business, and we had a lot more smaller deal size. So we were able to extract a higher margin. So it all depends on what's in our pipeline. We do have a lot of large deals in our pipeline that we're working through. Our pipeline is growing each and every day. So you could see that number dip a little bit in the second quarter and the third quarter, depending on deal size. But it's deal size and mix. And to your point, the fourth quarter did have some really large deals in it.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Appreciate you guys taking the questions this morning. Sure.

Thank you. And as a quick reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 now. We'll take our next question from Rick Shane with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions this morning. A couple different things. In prior calls, you had talked about some fairly substantial capital investments in REO properties. I'm curious how much you guys have spent life to date in terms of that CapEx and what you expect going forward, giving your sort of expectations for additional REO properties.

Sure. So I think we look at it a couple of different ways. We break down the REO book. As I said in my commentary, we've been in the process recently of engaging brokers and really trying to find people that are interested in these assets that are experts in that particular market with that particular asset. And we're doing a really nice job, I think, of getting a significant amount of bids. There's certainly more capital out there now chasing deals. So we've seen a real influx. and opportunities to dispose of the assets quicker, which is why we are guiding to getting our REO book down to roughly 250 to 300. I would say that from a CapEx perspective, there are certain assets that we expect to hold on to. There's a subset of assets in that 250 to 300 that we expect to hold on to a little longer and stabilize, and we are feeding those assets with CapEx. Let me see if I can get some numbers for you, what we've done. In the quarter, I think we put about $8 to $10 million in CapEx in certain assets. That's what happened in the first quarter. And let me see if I can find for you what we've done live to date, because that was your question, right?

Yeah. And actually, it's interesting. I appreciate you referencing the comment about uh working with the brokers i was curious that that's actually what precipitated that comments what precipitated my question i'm curious if there's a little bit of a change in strategy here which instead of sort of investing and trying to potentially optimize outcome on a longer timeline whether you're sort of taking a first loss best loss approach here and accelerating uh the disposals

I think a lot of it's loan-specific. If we feel we can get to the market with an asset fairly quickly without putting CapEx in, we will do it. Early on in, there were certain assets that really required CapEx to put them in a asset-specific of the situation? It is asset-specific, but I would say we're leaning towards the side, as you referenced, that we can resolve the asset on an accelerated basis at our mark. We're certainly looking to do that. So we've had a few of those this quarter in my commentary as part of that 23 million of realized losses, and we continue to push that way. It is asset-specific, but we are definitely leaning towards if we can resolve them quicker, we will. Got it.

Okay. And then that actually relates to something that someone pinged me about, which is during the quarter, you sold a property for $25 million, provided $24.5 million bridge loan, which seems like a fairly aggressive financing structure. As you are resolving the REO, Is part of the intention to provide financing for those transactions? And is that type of advance rate going to be typical of how you're approaching things? And how should we think about that from a credit perspective?

I think once again, it's asset specific, but a lot has to do with law structures as well. So while it may be a high advance rate, there are capital commitments and guarantees that are required on those loans from the people who are stepping into those transactions. So we'll look at, you know, our recoveries and our returns and look at it on each particular case. Many of the times, as far as we've done a lot of business with, strong balance sheets, and while we may give them a high level of leverage going in and create a very seamless process, their commitment to maintain that asset with the right guarantees of capex and interest guarantees offset that high leverage.

Got it. Okay. And then last question, and I know I've asked several, but as we think about dividend policy going forward, and again, it really, you know, you guys have clearly trued the dividend off to distributable earnings. I know different commercial mortgage REITs talk about distributable earnings, X realized losses, not always our favorite metric. I'm curious, as we are looking at our models, what do you think we should use as the guidepost for dividend? Is it distributable earnings or is there something else particularly, you know, obviously, you know, we know that you guys have an incentive ultimately to increase the dividend line with shareholder interest.

i want to make sure we're looking at the right metrics so that we catch any inflections either up or down going forward you're right good question so we we clearly look at it um distributable earnings x to realize one-time realized losses that we've provided for already that have reduced book value already that's how we look at it what are we earning from a cash perspective and that's that's how we look at it so in this quarter we put up 18 cents extra losses What I've guided you guys to is a little bit of a low watermark in second and third quarter. Absent the two-cent one-time drag that probably puts me at 15 cents for the second quarter, I think we're really at 17 cents if you add that back in Q2 and 17 cents in Q3. And then what I've guided to is if we can execute our business strategy very effectively, which we're laser-focused on, and really start to turn a lot of these non-performing assets into performing assets, we'll start to see growth in the fourth quarter in that distributable earnings number. So we've set the dividend where we think we can earn it for the rest of the year, and we've set it to where we think distributable earnings will be next to those one-time losses.

Got it. Okay. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from David Varnum with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. So roughly 40% of your loan portfolio is in Texas and Florida, where there's quite a bit of housing supply across multifamily, SFR, and single-family housing. Can you please provide some updated commentary on what you're seeing on the ground in those geographies?

Sure. What we're really seeing is being at the bottom of the market. I think the last 24 months, there's been an extreme amount of softness, but we're seeing it for a month. I think some of the issues that we face in the Texas market and in the Florida market in particular and also in the Atlanta market, the issue with immigration and the issue with the ICE rates really had an a real negative impact on the portfolio, and it's really accelerated some of the delicacies. We've had assets that were 90% occupied for years and years and years, and it's dropped up 50% overnight. So over the last 12 months, I think with the ice rates, it's had a negative impact in those markets. That's kind of getting behind us at this point, and we are seeing a reset of rental rates, both in occupancy rates. What we also saw for a period of time was a real slowness and a real issue with respect to credit on our tenants, and also the inability to remove them from occupancy. That has changed the court system to sped up. And I think that the software that's been put in place and the discipline that's put in place to catch fraud and put the right tenant base in place, that's improved dramatically as well. The other thing we're seeing is we're accelerating our efforts in terms of assets that are not performing properly. We are requiring management changes and are taking control over these assets. It's generally the case when, you know, assets are cashed off, that they get poorly managed. So we've taken very aggressive steps to make those corrections, and that's why it's reflected a little bit in our forecast, because we're taking control over those assets either directly or indirectly, and during that period of time, we're going to have a little bit of a drag on our end while we're doing it. But we're seeing the benefit of our effort by seeing a real stabilization in these assets and our growth back in occupancy and operating income.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Jade Romani with KBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. I wanted to ask you about the CECL reserve or the credit loss reserve, which currently stands at $131 million, which is 1.1% of the portfolio. You said you expect realized losses of about $15 to $25 million a quarter for the next three quarters, so that's $70 million. Assuming that comes out of CECL, there would be a remaining $60 million of CECL which is 0.6% of the portfolio. So, you know, I think the question is if you're going to be taking additional CECL reserves in future quarters and if there's a normalized CECL reserve ratio that should be on this portfolio. You mentioned that there's about a billion of, you know, non-performing assets, including REO and non-accruals.

Sure. So, Jane, I think you can't look at it just on the nonperforming assets on the delinquencies. You've got to look at it with the REO assets. So, yes, we have $130 million of CECL on the balance sheet book, and obviously we have $500 million or $481 million of delinquencies on the balance sheet book. But we also have $520 million of REO assets that we took another $12.5 million of impairment this quarter, took $20.5 the prior quarter, and before those loans were transferred to REO, we had booked CECL reserves on those. So there's about $85 million of reserves sitting in the REO book. That REO book has been written down by 85 million. So you've got to take that 85, you've got to take the 130, and you've got to divide it over the REO and delinquency book, which puts your ratio more like 1.7, 1.8 times. and that's probably the right ratio. To answer your second question, a couple of points to your question I want to address. One is, yes, we've guided to 15 to 25 and revised losses going forward, but not all of those will be delinquencies. Some of those will be REO. So you've got to look at those buckets together. That's how we look at it. And then third, yes, we are guiding that in this market, given the interest rate environment, given the fact that we've engaged brokers and we're getting more price discovery on assets, that it's hard to sit here and tell you exactly what the numbers will be, but if past performance is an indication of future events, given this rate environment, we think the range of CECL reserves we'll be booking, including impairment on REO, is probably in the same range for the next few quarters. Does that help answer that question?

Yes, definitely. Lastly, I think I missed the weighted average. Of the interest rate on the portfolio, which is 6.49%, can you parse out the weighted average cash pay rate or current pay rate?

Sure. I can do that for you. So, yeah, 6.49 is the pay rate, but another, you know, I'm calling it 25 basis points of that is origination and exit fees that we accrete over time, so that is cash. And then the other $25 million, you know, is PIC. But I want to talk about the PIC a little bit because we had some commentary on the call, and I think it's helpful for you guys. So during the quarter, we booked just about $5 million of PIC interest on our bridge loans. Okay, we have about 2 million PIC interest on our MEDS and PE, but that's standard. That's how MEDS and PE operates. You put on a MEDS and PE behind an agency, you get a certain pay rate, and the rest is in the PIC. So that's always happened since the beginning of time on our MEDS and PE. But on the balance sheet business, the bridge business, The pick for the quarter was down to $5 million. If you remember going back about a year ago, that pick was probably about $18 million. So certainly it's come down a lot. It's a lot smaller portion of our earnings for a few reasons. One, SOFR has dropped. Two, we've worked out a lot of loans and we've reset them at current rates. and the PIC has now been paid or recovered and doesn't have PIC going forward. And as Ivan mentioned, we're working on a bunch of deals now, some pretty big ones, that we're going to get a fair share of that PIC paid back, and then it won't have PIC going forward. So I'm thinking that that in that all-in rate that we gave you of 703 was probably $5 million-ish of balance sheet loan pick, maybe $2 million-ish of MES and PE pick. I think the balance sheet pick will actually go down because when we work these loans out, they won't be picked. So I'm thinking that $5 million a quarter goes down to probably like $4 million a quarter on the balance sheet loans.

Okay, great. Thanks for the comment.

Thank you. I'm showing no additional questions at this time. I'd like to now turn the conference back to Ivan Kaufman for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for your participation today, and everybody have a great weekend.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.