Shaya Boymelgreen has been giving away fancy toasters, an odd line of work for a man who recently made his fortune putting up buildings.
But Boymelgreen, who’s expanded his business efforts into financing with his recently opened LibertyPointe Bank, is taking an old-fashioned approach in rebuilding Downtown. The toasters are a throwback promotion to entice customers to open accounts, and while he may be distinctive, Boymelgreen isn’t alone as a developer-turned-lender.
Banking is becoming an increasingly attractive business line for a number of developers. As a red-hot residential real estate market cools, real estate moguls such as Boymelgreen, Howard Milstein, and Robert Johnson continue to see opportunity on the lending side. Many are looking to diversify their revenue streams by getting into a business with which they have become intimately involved as borrowers, catering to both those in the real estate business as well as consumers opening a savings or a checking account.
In November, Boymelgreen, the Israeli developer whose condo projects include the conversion of the former J.P. Morgan offices at 15 Broad Street and the wedding cake office building 20 Pine Street, opened LibertyPointe in the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway. In an effort to have the bank’s appearance reflect the personal Old World banking experience that vice chairman Meyer Eichler says it’s committed to providing, Boymelgreen restored as many original details to the building as possible.
“We are the first new bank in Lower Manhattan since September 11,” Eichler said. “We are going to serve the new, burgeoning community of Lower Manhattan.”
LibertyPointe hopes that by being located Downtown, it can engender the loyalty of its current and future neighbors, Eichler said.
In order to lend money to a developer or anyone else, banks like LibertyPointe raise money from consumers through checking and savings accounts. They then make money on the spread between the relatively low interest rate paid to consumers and the higher interest rates charged to borrowers like developers.
LibertyPointe already has north of $50 million in deposits, Eichler said, and he noted the synergies between real estate development and real estate lending.
“The only difference between the world of banking and the world of Mr. Boymelgreen is the side of the table that you’re sitting at,” Eichler said. “He knows and understands the intricacies of the real estate development process and can address [developers’] needs. He knows every facet of the market.”
Starting a bank is no small task. To open a bank in New York state, a proposed entity must go through a lengthy process that includes, but is not limited to, an investigation of incorporators, directors, and major shareholders; an analysis of the need and potential viability of the institution; and an outline of costs. Organizers must get assurances that deposits will be insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and must raise enough capital, which in the New York metropolitan area tends to range from a minimum of $7 million to $10 million, according to the New York state Banking Department.
Other real estate veterans are going through similar red tape in starting up banks. Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson, who sold his cable network to Viacom Inc. in 2001 for $3 billion, now owns more than 130 hotels worth $3 billion through his firm RLJ Development. In March, he bought a small Orlando bank, Metro Bank FSB. Johnson’s plans call for the bank to be re-christened Urban Trust Bank and its headquarters to move to Washington, D.C. And New York City-based Emigrant Bank, founded in 1850 and taken over by developer Howard Milstein, has quadrupled its real estate lending staff in the last year. Several of its lenders are located on the West Coast, just one of the areas where the bank sees opportunity.
“We don’t want concentration in our portfolios of any one property type and we don’t want to be only in New York, we want to have geographical diversity,” said Emigrant senior executive vice president and chief credit officer Pat Goldstein, who worked for Citigroup and joined Emigrant in late 2004. “Retail can be doing well when condos aren’t, or California can do well when New York isn’t.”
The combination of a real estate development background and smaller scale may allow banks such as LibertyPointe and Emigrant to be more nimble and to execute deals larger institutions can’t, or won’t, touch.
At LibertyPointe, borrowers “have access to the president, CEO, and vice chairman,” Eichler said. At large national and global banks you’re not able to do that, he said.
A smaller size also speeds the process, Goldstein says.
“The response time is very fast, we don’t have to go overseas to get approval, the chairman and myself make decisions — up to a certain level. We don’t have to wait for a once-a-month meeting. We can meet and in five minutes make a decision,” Goldstein said. If the bank knows the borrower well and has a solid understanding of the deal, Goldstein added, they “can have the decision the same day.”
While Emigrant is extending its reach outside of New York, LibertyPointe’s founders are, for now, focused on opportunities close to its base. In addition to Lower Manhattan, Eichler says the bank sees opportunities in the Brooklyn market and hopes to use its ties to the Jewish community in the borough to build additional business.