TRD Insights: Real estate’s most prolific PPP banks

Banks are fattening their wallets with fees for processing Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program loans to U.S. companies. Here’s a breakdown of the banks that stand to earn the most from real estate PPP loans, according to TRD Insights’ analysis of data released Monday.

Which Lenders Delivered the Most SBA Cash to Real Estate?

East West Bank, founded in 1973 to provide financial services to the Chinese-American community, delivered the largest volume of SBA loans to hotels and motels, somewhere between $149 million and $346 million across 226 loans. This was the highest subindustry loan volume by any bank. Loans managed by East West made up about 4.4 percent of all hotel and motel loans.

East West Bank delivered seven PPP loans of $5 million to $10 million to various hospitality companies. One went to XLD Group, a Chinese-American real estate developer that owns a 1,004-key, Marriott-branded hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. Another went to Burton Way Hotels, the owner of the Beverly Hills Four Seasons.

JPMorgan Chase delivered the most loans issued to commercial and institutional builders, with a total volume of $118 million to $284 million across 332 loans. The bank delivered a loan of $5 million to $10 million to Pinnacle Industries, a subcontractor at Extell’s 95-story Central Park Tower, and another of that size to Whitestone Construction, a Woodside, Queens-based general contractor.

JPMorgan also led emergency lending in seven of 20 real estate-related subindustries. This aligns with JPMorgan’s broader SBA lending: The bank inked between $823 million and $1.4 billion in fees for delivering emergency loans to businesses, the most by any bank that participated in the federal program, according to an analysis of SBA loan data by researchers at New York University and Stanford University.

Breakdown of Key Subindustries by State

Breaking down subindustry PPP loans by state shows that although large multinational banks managed bigger loan portfolios nationally, smaller regional banks tended to dominate in their home states.

For example, Signature Bank, a major lender in New York City and the tristate area and Donald Trump’s “go-to” bank, led in delivering loans to commercial construction companies in New York. The bank delivered between $40.7 million and $97.4 million to commercial builders in the state, beating JPMorgan, which led in delivery of such loans nationally.

Signature delivered a $2 million to $5 million loan to Citnalta Construction, which in 2017 was one of the biggest renovation contractors in Queens. Other commercial builders that received loans from Signature include CNY Construction and James E. Fitzgerald Inc.

Similarly, banks that led in delivering SBA loans in West Coast states tended to be from that end of the country. Los Angeles–based City National Bank, dubbed “Bank of the Stars” for its close ties with high-net-worth entertainment clients in Hollywood, delivered between $14.2 million and $32.5 million in loans to housing for-sale construction businesses in California, leading that category in the state.

JPMorgan still made its presence known in the Empire State, managing by far the biggest portfolio of loans to New York architectural firms, both in terms of dollar volume and loan count. JPMorgan delivered between $48 million and $117 million in SBA loans to architectural firms in New York, accounting for nearly one-third of loan volume to architectural firms in the state.

Ennead Architects, the firm behind the Standard High Line hotel at 848 Washington Street, received a $2 million to $5 million loan delivered by JPMorgan. Other New York architects that received big SBA loans managed by JPMorgan include Rafael Viñoly and CookFox Architects.