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spk00: Good morning. My name is Donna, and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Granite Point Mortgage Trust's fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results conference call. All participants will be on listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. Please note, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Petta with Investor Relations for Granite Point. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call to discuss Granite Point's fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results. With me on the call this morning are Jack Taylor, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Marcin Urbasik, our Chief Financial Officer, Steve Alpard, our Chief Investment Officer and Co-Head of Originations, Peter Murau, our Chief Development Officer and Co-Head of Originations, and Steve Pluss, our Chief Operating Officer. After my introductory comments, Jack will provide a brief recap of market conditions and review our current business activities. Steve Alport will discuss our portfolio, and Morrison will highlight key items from our financial results and capitalization. The press release, financial tables, and earnings supplemental associated with today's call were filed yesterday with the SEC and are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. We expect to file our form 10-K in the coming weeks. I would like to remind you that remarks made by management during this call and the supporting slides may include forward-looking statements which are uncertain outside the company's control. Forward-looking statements reflect our views regarding future events and are subject to uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. We see our filings with the SEC for a discussion of some of our risks that could affect results. We do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP measures on this call. This information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to most comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and slides, which are available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Jack.
spk03: Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. We would like to welcome you and thank you for joining us for Granite Point's fourth quarter and full-year 2023 earnings call. 2023 was another challenging year for the commercial real estate industry for both property owners and lenders. Transaction volumes have remained extremely low. High interest rates have continued to increase the cost of capital, pressuring property values across sectors. They have also created low visibility for market participants about the future cost of capitals. and so further reduce liquidity in the sector. At the end of 2023, we communicated our cautious approach to the market while putting more emphasis on maintaining higher liquidity and proactively managing our portfolio to protect our balance sheet and investors' capital. Our team has decades of experience managing various real estate lending businesses through market volatility caused by various economic, credit, and interest rate cycles, As such, we firmly believe that during challenging periods like today, emphasizing balance sheet stability and protecting the downside is the prudent strategy, both to effectively navigate market uncertainty and to position the business for future success and growth opportunities, even though such steps pressure the company's returns and profitability in the near term. In mid-2022, with the expectation of continued Federal Reserve actions and the resulting impact on commercial real estate fundamentals and valuations, we shifted our strategy from new loan originations to increasing liquidity, to further diversifying our funding sources, and to proactively managing our portfolio by collaboratively working with our borrowers. We're pleased to report that in using this approach, we have accomplished a number of our goals in navigating the market challenges. We have reduced our leverage to one of the lowest levels in the industry. and well below our target range. We realized a significant volume of loan repayments, paydowns, and resolutions, totaling over $725 million last year, illustrating the liquidity embedded in our portfolio. And we resolved several non-accrual loans as we addressed select credit issues. Our proactive balance sheet management strategy also enabled us to repay with cash two convertible bond maturities totaling over $275 million within 10 months of each other, the latest of which was in October of 2023, as we did not want to access the capital markets during this challenging period. We have also opportunistically deployed capital into our own securities. As part of our flexible capital allocation strategy, and given the attractive relative value, over the course of 2023, we repurchased about 2 million shares of our common stock, representing some 3.8% of our shares outstanding, generating book value accretion of about 35 cents per common share. We currently have a little over 4 million shares remaining under our existing authorization, and we intend to remain opportunistic with respect to any future buyback activity. We believe that despite the significant market challenges our industry has faced over the last couple of years, Our granular senior floating rate loan portfolio has delivered relatively attractive returns, benefiting from higher short-term rates and diversification across property types, many markets, and many sponsors, who generally remain supportive of their investments. Although transaction volumes have remained subdued across the real estate market, our portfolio has benefited from its broad diversification and middle market focus, And as I mentioned earlier, we realized a strong pace of loan repayments last year of over 20% of our portfolio. The loan payoffs have been across property types, the largest of which, or about 35%, was related to loans collateralized by office properties. In fact, over the last couple of years, our exposure to office loans has significantly declined by over $500 million, or about 30%. primarily due to repayments and paydowns, and also select loan resolutions. Many of our repayments have come from loans that have been previously amended to allow borrowers more time to progress on their business plans and complete their exits through either property sales or refinancing. This illustrates the benefit of working with our borrowers. The pace of repayments remains volatile and uncertain, and we will continue to manage our business accordingly. While we believe our conservative underwriting has helped our portfolio performance, given the severity of market challenges, we are not immune to experiencing select credit issues, which we continue to proactively address, including the resolution of a San Diego office loan in the fourth quarter. As we progress on various resolution strategies for certain loans, during the fourth quarter, we downgraded two loans from a risk rating of four to a risk rating of five. Both of Baton Rouge mixed-use retail and office assets and the Chicago office assets are in various stages of resolutions involving potential property sales by their sponsors, which Steve will address shortly. Our GAAP results include additional credit loss provisions mainly related to the five rated loans, while our overall fourth quarter CECL reserve was 4.7% of total commitments versus about 4.9% last quarter. Overall market sentiment has improved somewhat over the past months, following the recent shift in the Fed's stance pointing to anticipated reductions in the federal funds target rate during 2024. And we believe that sentiment and activity will likely continue to improve, particularly during the second half of the year. However, the continued strength in the labor market and consumer spending supporting the overall performance of the U.S. economy may impact the timing of such interest rate cuts, which may further delay the recovery in the commercial real estate market. Although we have seen a modest pickup in transaction volumes in the industry, we believe the future path of macro trends remains uncertain. Fundamental performance across property types continues to be uneven, and high interest rates all contribute to continued constrained liquidity in the real estate market. As such, in the near to medium term, we will continue to emphasize maintaining higher liquidity, working with our borrowers to facilitate repayments, and resolving our non-accrual loans, giving their meaningful impact on our returns. We believe that these actions over time will help improve our run rate profitability while positioning us to redeploy our capital into attractive investments and grow our portfolio as the real estate market stabilizes. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Alpart to discuss our portfolio activities in more detail.
spk08: Thank you, Jack. And thank you all for joining our call this morning. We ended the fourth quarter with total portfolio commitments of $2.9 billion and an outstanding principal balance of about $2.7 billion, with $160 million of future funding, accounting for only about 6% of total commitments. Our portfolio remains well diversified across regions and property types and includes 73 loan investments with an average size of about $37 million. Both of our loans continue to benefit from higher short-term interest rates and deliver an attractive income stream and carry a generally favorable credit profile with a weighted average stabilized LTV at origination of 64%. Our realized portfolio yield for the fourth quarter was about 8.3%, net of the impact of the non-accrual loans, which we estimate to have been about 90 basis points. During the fourth quarter, we funded $15 million of existing loan commitments and upsizes, and one new loan for about $49 million related to the previously disclosed resolution of the risk-rated five San Diego office loans. So far in the first quarter, we have funded about $7 million of existing commitments. During 2023, we realized over $725 million of loan payoffs, including over $255 million in the fourth quarter, consisting of full loan repayments, principal paydowns, and select loan resolutions. About 35% of the repayment volume is related to office properties, and about 28% were multifamily assets, with the balance allocated primarily between hotel and industrial loans. Despite the broader market challenges, our volume of loan repayments has been relatively healthy, including from office assets, as we have benefited from some more liquidity in the middle market and our broad portfolio diversification across primary and secondary markets. Given the market uncertainty, repayments are hard to predict. In the near term, we anticipate our loan portfolio balance to trend lower as we maintain our cautious stance and continue to prioritize maintaining higher levels of liquidity. Interest rates follow the current consensus path and decline in the second half of the year. We would anticipate some continued improvement in the commercial real estate capital markets, with the real estate markets improving, transaction volumes increasing, and repayment levels normalizing. While higher interest rates have generally benefited our returns and those of our industry, increased capital costs and reduced liquidity have negatively affected certain borrowers and, in turn, the performance of several of our loans. During the fourth quarter, we downgraded two loans from risk rankings of 4 to 5, including an $86 million senior loan collateralized by a mixed-use retail and office property in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and an $80 million senior loan secured by an office property with a retail component in Chicago. We have been monitoring these assets for some time, and both are in various stages of potential resolutions. The borrower on the Baton Rouge loan has launched a sale process for the property. The process remains ongoing, and while it is difficult to predict the timing and ultimate outcome, we hope to reach a potential resolution in the next couple of quarters. The borrower on the Chicago property is also in negotiations to potentially sell the asset. However, the process is in its early stages. In addition, during the quarter, we also moved to a risk ranking of four, a smaller $26 million senior loan secured by an office property located in Boston that has been negatively impacted by the ongoing soft leasing environment in that market. We are in active discussions with the borrower on this asset as we evaluate potential next steps with respect to this loan. These actions, along with the repayments realized in the fourth quarter, resulted in a portfolio weighted average risk ranking of 2.8 as of December 31st compared to 2.7 in the prior period. As we previously disclosed, during the quarter we resolved a non-accrual $93 million San Diego office loan through a coordinated deed and loot transaction and a sale of the property to a new buyer while providing $49 million senior floating rate acquisition loan to the new ownership who invested meaningful cash equity into the transaction. We worked collaboratively over many months with our previous borrower and the new owner to bring this transaction to a successful conclusion and in the process created an attractive earning asset at a reset basis. As we discussed on our last call, during the quarter we also opportunistically sold a $31.8 million senior loan collateralized by an office property located in Dallas. These two resolutions resulted in losses, most of which had been previously accounted for in our book value through our CECL reserves. Considering the impact of the non-performing loans have on our run rate profitability, we are actively pursuing various resolution paths for these assets to allow us to redeploy our capital and improve our operating results. The borrower on a $28 million Minneapolis hotel loan has been conducting a sale process for the property, and that process remains ongoing. We are in active discussions with the sponsors on the $37 million LA mixed-use office and retail loan and the $93 million Minneapolis office loan regarding next steps and potential resolutions, both of which are likely to take longer than some of the other assets we are looking to resolve given local market conditions. With respect to the REO office property in Phoenix, we are actively asset managing the property, which continues to generate modestly positive operating income. We continue to evaluate potential next steps, including a sale process. We're pleased with our progress to date on these assets and remain focused on resolving all the non-performing loans. We're also pleased that the majority of our borrowers remain committed to their assets. I will now turn the call over to Marcin for a more detailed review of our financial results and capitalization.
spk05: Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Yesterday afternoon, we reported a fourth quarter gap net loss of $17.1 million, or 33 cents per basic share, which includes a provision for credit losses of $21.6 million, or $0.42 per basic share, mainly related to certain risk-rated five loans. Distributable loss for the quarter was $26.4 million, or $0.52 per basic share, including a write-off of $33.3 million, or $0.65 per basic share, related to the resolution of our San Diego office loan we disclosed in December. Distributor earnings before realized losses was $7 million, or 14 cents per basic share, and reflects the impact of loan repayments and additional loans placed on non-accrual status during the quarter. Our book value at December 31st was $12.91 per common share, a decline of about 37 cents per share, or about 2.7% from Q3. The decrease was primarily due to the loan loss provision the impact of which was partially offset by our accretive repurchases of 1 million common shares during the quarter, which we estimate benefited book value by about 16 cents per share. Our CECL reserve at year end was about $137 million, or $2.71 per share, representing about 4.7 percent of our portfolio commitments, as compared to about $149 million, or 4.9 percent of total commitments last quarter. The modest change in our CECL reserve was mainly related to the write-off of the allowance related to the San Antonio asset, loan repayments, and slightly better macro assumptions used in estimating the general reserve, partially offset by additional specific allowance recorded on the two new risk-rated five loans. Two-thirds of our total CECL reserve, or about $90 million, is allocated to certain individually assessed loans, which implies an estimated loss severity of about 27%. As of year end, we had about $450 million of loans on non-accrual status, most of which are in various stages of resolutions. The additional loans that were placed on non-accrual accounted for over $5 million of interest income during the fourth quarter. Given the impact our non-performing assets have on run rate profitability, we anticipate our earnings to be lower dividend in the near term. As we make progress on resolving these assets, we believe the company's profitability should improve over time, though the exact timing and ultimate outcomes remain difficult to predict. Turning to liquidity and capitalization, we ended the quarter with over $188 million of unrestricted cash and our total leverage continued to modestly decline to 2.1 times in Q4 from 2.2 times in Q3, mainly due to loan payoffs and repayment of the convertible notes in October, which was partially offset by an additional $100 million in borrowings related to an upsizing of the J.P. Morgan facility during the quarter. Our funding mix remains well diversified and stable, and we enjoy continued support from our lenders highlighting the strength of these long-standing relationships. Following the repayment of our convertible notes, we have no corporate debt maturities remaining. As of a few days ago, we carried about $170 million in unrestricted cash. I would like to thank you again for joining us today, and we will now open the call for questions.
spk00: Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at this time. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star key. Once again, that is star 1 to register a question at this time. Today's first question is coming from Steve Delaney of Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.
spk02: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Steve Alpert, you mentioned in your comments a Boston loan. I believe you indicated it was downgraded to a five. Was that an event that took place here in the first quarter of 2024? It's not listed on the page 11 on the five rated loans as of year end.
spk08: Hey, Steve, good morning. Thanks for joining our call this morning. Um, that loan was downgraded in the fourth quarter, uh, from a three to a four.
spk02: My bad. Okay.
spk08: Not, not, not to a five. Right.
spk02: Okay. Got it. And that leads me to my next question was kind of like what's left in four rated loans. Um, given the transition that you had, uh, to a couple of fives in the fourth quarter, um, I believe it was seven, you said the fours were 7% of the portfolio, which sounds like it'd be about 200 million dollars. How many loans are in that four bucket currently?
spk08: Sure, there's four loans, Steven, the four bucket, as of December.
spk02: Okay, great, that's helpful, thank you very much. Okay, and... I guess this is just kind of a general comment, but hearing you talk about your liquidity and retaining cash, and Marcin's comments about near-term earnings coming in below the dividend, and we model that as well simply because of some assumed losses impacting distributable EPS. Jack, I guess I'll direct this to you. You have been using your buyback. Looking at where things stand now, would it not make sense for the board to consider trimming the dividend? The yield now is mid-teens or higher today. Trim the dividend and allocate more of that cash capital into buying back the shares down here, less than 50% a book. Just curious your thoughts on that suggestion.
spk03: Hi, Steve. This is Jack. It's good to speak with you, and thank you for joining us. Sure, I'll answer that. First, I'll start out by saying it's our policy and our goal to provide an attractive income stream through the dividend to our stockholders. Dividend sustainability and the desire for it to be supported by our expectations for the run rate operating profitability is key in our mind, and that's also with a view of the long-term Excuse me, I have a little bit of laryngitis. Given the really uncertain environment, making projections is really pretty difficult and estimates is very challenging. And we recognize that during this period and other periods of credit challenges, we and others in the industry may under-earn the dividend for a period of time, especially as we work on resolving the non-accrual loans, as you pointed out. And so as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, we anticipate that our earnings will be below the current dividend in the near term. And as we resolve these non-performing assets, as we pointed out, a meaningful drag on our profitability. Now, we don't anticipate that. We certainly don't anticipate that to be a permanent situation. But we don't know how long that is going to take and how long the resolutions will take. So management, along with our board, will continue to evaluate the company's dividend in respect to future quarters. And the dividend is, of course, ultimately a decision of the board. But all these factors we're taking into account, including what you were saying about stock buybacks and our flexible capital strategy allows us, as we have in the past, and we have authorization for it, to take advantage of what we consider to be a very deep discount against value in our stock buybacks.
spk02: I appreciate that, Jack. Can you say what the remaining buyback authorization was as of the end of 23?
spk03: I believe we have 4 million. Yes, we have 4 million buyback authorization remaining. I think it's a little bit more, but it's a 4 point something, like 4.1.
spk02: Okay, great. That's helpful. Okay, well, thanks for the comments.
spk03: Thank you.
spk00: Thank you. The next question is coming from Stephen Laws of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hi, good morning. Good morning. You know, a couple of questions around the NPLs. I guess, you know, first, and Steve, Alfred, I appreciate the color as you kind of ran through them. It certainly seems like you said LA mixed use and the mini office maybe are going to be longer resolutions. But, you know, as you try to bucket the others that you went through, Any thoughts on which ones could be resolved, first half 24, which ones maybe second half, or is there a way to somewhat kind of force rank what can be addressed sooner rather than later as you think about those loans?
spk08: Sure. Hey, Steve, good morning. Thanks for joining our call this morning. Good to talk to you. So, yeah, so as you said earlier, the L.A. mixed use and the Minneapolis office asset, just given what's happening in those two markets, we think that those are probably a little bit longer than some of the others. The Baton Rouge mixed use, just to kind of do a quick march here, that borrower has launched a sale process to sell the property. That process is ongoing as we speak. It's difficult in this market to predict timing, but that's one I would say we hope to resolve in the next couple of quarters. The Chicago office deal, which has a retail component as well, we're working with that borrower. They're in negotiations to potentially sell the property. It's early stages. We're hopeful for a resolution. I would probably characterize that one as more intermediate term. Again, the timing is hard to predict. This is an FYI. We have no other office exposure in that market. The Minneapolis hotel loan, that borrower is also conducting a sale process, also ongoing. We'll evaluate next steps with them once they have more feedback, which hopefully is soon. Again, timing's hard to predict, but that one's also ongoing. And then the Phoenix REO asset, we've talked in some prior quarters that that configuration lays out well for potential conversion to residential. So there's some optionality, whether it's multifamily, whether it's office. We're actively managing that one right now. We're evaluating next steps that could include a potential sale process, and we'll share more information on that one as it develops.
spk07: Great. And I guess as a follow-up to those, will we see you offer any buyers kind of seller financing or financing on the new assets, the way you did with San Diego, or there are certain assets that, that you don't want to have exposure to going forward. You know, how do you think about the willingness to provide financing to, to the ultimate buyer in these sales process?
spk08: Sure. So it's, it's something that we've, uh, we've done in the past. It's a, it's something in the toolkit. Um, we can do it where it's necessary, certainly where it's necessary to facilitate a sale. Um, in this market, um, particularly for some of these assets, you know, the office lending market obviously is difficult. So we would probably expect for, you know, a lot of these office resolutions that we're probably going to be providing some type of financing. That's not necessarily the case. We didn't provide any financing on the Dallas office note sale. So it's something we can do case by case. We've done it. We'll evaluate it case by case.
spk07: Great. And then lastly, maybe for Marcin, you know, when you think about the NPLs and financing that may be in place on them, can you talk about what the drag on run rate earnings are? Is there some way to quantify that as far as, you know, once you get some resolutions and you're able to pay off the associated financing, kind of what the potential benefit is as you look at those assets?
spk05: Good morning, Stephen. Thank you for joining us. I would say that the biggest impact from those assets, and as I said in preferred remarks, it's over 400 million of them as of the end of the year, sort of interest income. They're financed sort of in a variety of different ways. But I would say most of the impact, the positive impact from resolutions would come from potentially turning them into earning assets, as Steve Alper just talked about if we decide to provide financing, um, you know, or so repaying some of the expense of debt, but it's, it's, it's pretty meaningful. I mean, the, as, as you heard us say, you know, they, they sort of accounted for about 90 basis points of yield from an interest income perspective. Um, uh, so that's, that's, that's pretty meaningful. Um, so it's, it's sort of hard to quantify depending on which resolution happens, uh, on which loan. Um, but it's, it's, it's in double digits and earnings per share per quarter for sure.
spk07: Yeah, that's the math I was getting to, too. I appreciate the color on that. Thanks for your comments this morning. Thank you.
spk03: Thank you, Steve.
spk00: Thank you. The next question is coming from Doug Harder of UBS. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks. Can you talk about your upcoming 2024 maturities, you know, just in the context of helping us get comfortable that you have, you know, in the current risk ratings, have your arms around, you know, potential new problems.
spk08: Hey, Doug. Good morning. It's Steve. Thanks for joining the call. So, as we look out into 2024, 2025, I think we have a pretty good handle. Some of these loans are will pay off in the normal course. I saw last year in 2023, 2022, we've had pretty good repayment pace on these loans. So some of these loans will continue to just pay off in the normal course. Some of them will extend outright. Some of them won't qualify for an extension. Some of them may be coming up on a final maturity. I think that's a question you're getting at. We have a playbook for working, you know, for resolving those. You know, in general, if something's coming up and we've got a good borrower doing all the right things, you know, and they're financially committed to the asset, we'll come up with a plan to potentially give more time to get loan paydowns, to get debt service reserves replenished to try and create some kind of a win-win situation. And what I just described will handle the bulk of it. and then there'll be a smaller cohort of loans, you know, the fives, for example, where we have to kind of take a different approach, and that may be a note sale, could be a property sale, could be working with our borrower to sell the property, you know, going to the earlier question, you know, case by case, we can provide seller financing, so it's kind of a range of outcomes, a range of tools that we have. We're obviously very focused on this. The tone with our borrowers for the majority of our assets is very positive. People are still putting money in to these deals. But look, we recognize the environment is challenging for a lot of these loans, particularly office loans. And that's why you've seen us increase our CISO reserves, which I think are about doubled since Q4 2022. It's something we're very focused on.
spk04: Great, and then, you know, kind of in the, you know, how are you thinking about your current liquidity, you know, how much of that, you know, with no corporate debt maturities, how much of that liquidity could be used for buyback versus, you know, how much do you need to save for potential defensive portfolio actions?
spk03: Hi, this is Jack. Good to speak with you. Thank you for joining us. Well, we've been maintaining a focus on keeping an elevated level of liquidity. And even during that period of time, we have deployed some into purchasing our shares. And so we don't predict when we might and when, but we have the ability to do so and will remain opportunistic with respect to that. You know, we've had tremendous success so far with providing ourselves more financial liquidity in our asset management of our loan portfolio and addressing potential credit events. And as we've said in our prepared remarks, we're going to maintain that position. In prior calls, we've stated that our general goal is to maintain about 10% to 15% of our capital base in cash. Now, that obviously varies quarter to quarter, and we're currently north of that. But given market dynamics, we believe it's prudent to keep it elevated, but we'll remain opportunistic with respect to managing our balance sheet. And if there are opportunities to further improve our capitalization, we'll consider them like we've done in the past. And if there's opportunities to deploy the capital in accretive ways, we'll do that as well.
spk04: Great. Thank you, Jack.
spk00: Thank you. The next question is coming from Jade Romani of KBW. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you very much. Since we won't have the 10-K for some time, could you please provide the balance of non-performing loans and non-accrual loans? I guess the 10-Q had total loans past due. as of September 30th, of $231.8 million and non-accrual loans of $165.9 million. So just looking for an update on those two numbers.
spk05: Sure. Good morning, Jade. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for the question. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, you know, given sort of the downgrades that we had at the end of the year, we had about $450 million of loans that are non-accrual status.
spk06: And do you have the non-performing loans, the total past due?
spk05: That's pretty much the same number.
spk06: Okay. Has there been any change so far this year in terms of credit?
spk03: Hey, Jay, let me ask you if you could clarify. Are you saying over the past 12 months or since the beginning of Jan 1?
spk06: Since Jan 1.
spk03: Yeah, well, we've had – there's no update to the risk rankings or report that we just gave. I would say that we are – we're observing a couple of things in the market and from our borrowers. There is some increase – so there's nothing official to report as a post-Gen 1 event. But what I would say is that we have – A subset of the borrowers are watching the Fed even more closely in terms of the calibration of how much more money to put in for how long. There's just general fatigue throughout the market, we believe, including some of our borrowers. We continue, and Steve Alpert can talk to this, on the multifamily sector. We know that there's increasing concern in general about the multifamily sector in the market. we're still seeing a pretty good response from our borrowers and performance of our properties. And given our locations and our sponsors, we're not troubled by that portfolio. But that's what I would answer your question.
spk06: Okay, that's good to hear. Steve, did you want to provide any additional color on that question or perhaps multifamily?
spk08: Sure. I guess on the multifamily, Jay, we talked about this on our call last quarter. I'm commenting now specifically on the multifamily. It's still generally stable and healthy in the markets that we're in, including in the Sun Belt, which is, I think, where there's a lot of concern about heightened new supply, which we obviously see. We have assets in places like the Carolinas. They're doing fine. Savannah. doing well. Birmingham, very little new supply. So the supply even of the Sunbelt is not uniform. We are watching some of the markets in Texas. We've seen and you've heard on some of the other calls about overbuilding in Austin. We're not in Austin. We definitely have seen rent growth slow, but our business plans aren't primarily Based on rent growth, our business plans are usually based on doing a value-add renovation, looking to get rent bumps. We still are seeing that borrowers are getting rent bumps. It may not be exactly what was underwritten, but we think that if you turn the rent roll one or two times, they're likely to get there. Would not be surprised to see some multifamily assets fall a little bit behind plan. Um, but what we're seeing so far is that we just think it'll just maybe take like an extra year or two. Um, and, um, you know, we didn't do a ton of loans at the peak. We did some, we didn't do a ton. Um, and the loans that we were doing, you know, call it second half of 21, early 2022. Um, we were increasing our kind of exit debt yield. So the leverage is probably down five or 10 points. Uh, the borrowers have a good amount of equity to protect. So I think the general trend on multifamily, um, you know, is stable and positive. But we are seeing the headlines and we are all watching it very carefully.
spk06: Thanks very much. Since they're older originations, could you give an update on the Illinois multifamily? Origination date is 12-19. And also New York mixed use, since it's quite a large loan, 96 million. Origination is 12-18. You know, those risk rated three loans, is there any reserve against those? And what's going on with those plans? Should we expect any potential loss on those two?
spk08: Uh, yeah, they're both, they're both risk ranked, um, three. Um, uh, the first thing you mentioned was the Illinois multifamily was, there's actually two. Was it one in particular you were looking at?
spk06: Yeah. Last quarter it was about 109 million carrying value.
spk08: Got it. Okay. Right. Got that one. Um, No real specific update on that one. That one is doing fine. It's kind of, I would say, directionally on plan. The New York mixed-use one, that one is office with ground floor retail. The retail is largely leased. The business plan really revolves around leasing up the office space. The sponsors put in more capital to support the asset. It's currently ranked four. It's really about, at this point, about leasing up the office space.
spk06: Is there a reserve against that? Because this is a really old origination. So, I mean, if the office is still trying to lease up, you know, what are the risks that there's going to be an impairment on this? And what's the reserve held against it at this point?
spk05: Hey, Jed, yeah, this loan obviously has a reserve on it. It's part of our general pool, you know, being risk rated for. I think it's safe to assume that it has higher reserve than some of the other assets that are in the pool. It is a loan that we are obviously watching closely given sort of the New York and what's going on here. And it's hard to predict about but may or may not happen here, but it is definitely given it's a four rated loan. Uh, it's obviously on our quote unquote watch list and we're watching closely and we'll see what happens there.
spk06: Okay. Thanks. And then the general reserve, um, you know, I can't think of any others. I may be wrong though, but I can't think of any others that have taken the general reserve down by the magnitude that you all have. And I know there's, you know, management discretion, the macroeconomic variables are unemployment and interest rates. Clearly those improved in the fourth quarter, you know, interest rates are up this year, but management has discretion there. So why, why take down the general, we see, you know, headwinds still in the market.
spk05: Thanks for the question. And it's a, it's a function of, you know, movement in the portfolio, obviously, as there are some, downgrades from four to fives and some of the you know four rated loans may have some higher reserves like i said earlier than the rest of the pool as they sort of migrate right that reserve sort of migrates from the general to specific so that's part of it uh repayments is another part and so there's a general movement within the portfolio so we we remain cautious right our general pool is still close to two percent but as the portfolio sort of shifts and and continues to sort of run off a little bit and you have some of these downgrades i think you will we have seen, you know, to varying degrees sort of across the peer group where sort of you have that migration between the general and the specific pool in general. And that's what you would expect as sort of the cycle continues.
spk06: Okay, that's good color. That makes sense because the specific reserve did increase and then there were repayments. So, probably movement out of the general into the specific and then movement decline in the general due to loans that paid off.
spk05: Correct.
spk06: All right. Thanks for taking the questions.
spk05: Thank you.
spk00: Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Taylor for closing comments.
spk03: Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everybody, for joining our call. I always want to make sure I do. I want to thank our investors for their support and our team for their hard work, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you.
spk00: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This concludes today's event. You may disconnect your launch or log off the webcast at this time and enjoy the rest of your day.
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