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WEEK OF MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2017
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A Publication of The Warren Group BANKING ON MARIJUANA EXPIRING USES
FINDING A PATH TO RETAINING AFFORDABILITY
OVER 3,000 APARTMENTS STILL AT RISK
Three StateChartered Banks Said To Be Working In Marijuana Business Private Investors Bullish On Massachusetts’ Marijuana Market BY BRAM BERKOWITZ BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF
C
entury Bank has been the only known bank in Massachusetts willing to do business with marijuana dispensaries. But apparently there are others. Ryan Ansin, a Massachusetts marijuana investor, told a group of private equity firms and venture capitalists at a cannabis conference in Dedham hosted by Boston-based Law Firm Burns & Levinson that there are currently three state-chartered banks working with marijuana businesses. He declined to name the specific banks when asked by Banker & Tradesman. “It’s evolving rapidly. There was a web of credit unions on Indian reservations [looking to get involved], but as those groups were starting to get legs, state-chartered banks started working with the industry,” Continued on Page 8 MOTIVATION FOR MORTGAGEES
BY STEVE ADAMS | BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF
T
he financing package that enabled a nonprofit to preserve 52 units of affordable housing in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood was characteristically complex, tapping multiple sources to fill the gap between acquisition costs and future rental income. In the wake of Fenway Community Development Corp.’s $15.2 million acquisition of the Burbank Gardens complex, all of the units will remain income-restricted, including 39 apartments reserved for house-
holds earning no more than 60 percent of the area median income. In a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, Burbank Gardens residents otherwise would have faced conversion of their units to market-rate rents within three years. It’s a scenario playing out at 32 privately owned housing complexes across the state that participated in the state’s Section 13A mortgage program. Deeply affordable rents – available to households making 30 percent to 50 percent of area household median income – are being lifted as the Continued on Page 7
Affordability requirements for 85 units in Boston’s Mercantile Wharf apartments are scheduled to expire in 2018 as a 40-year state-subsidized mortgage is retired. Housing officials are using a variety of incentives to preserve more than 3,000 affordable units in similar properties across Massachusetts.
CONTENTS
In Person ������������������������������������������������������������������ 7
Residential ������������������������������������������������������������� 11
Points ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 4
Banking & Lending ��������������������������������������������������� 8
Classified Sections ������������������������������������������������� 14
By The Numbers ������������������������������������������������������� 6
Commercial & Industrial ������������������������������������������ 9
Records Section ������������������������������������������������������ B1
Nominal Sales Could Spell Trouble For Borrowers Change In Ownership Requires Lender Notification BY JIM MORRISON BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF
N
ominal sales of Cambridge condos jumped to 34 percent of all condo sales in the city so far this year, and mortgage lenders want to know about it. Twenty-four percent of the 880 condominiums sold in Cambridge in 2012 (or 211 condos) were nominal sales, according to data from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. As of the end of August 2017, the percentage of nominal sales was up to 34 percent, or 257 properties. Continued on Page 9