The banking industry should not hold its breath for a rollicking good time in 2012, as indicated by Trepp’s 2012 U.S. Banking Sector Outlook.

Developers are finding ready financing for their projects, including $66 million for a D.C. multi-family, $50 million for Las Vegas retail and $70 million for a Michigan apartment complex.

In what Ernst & Young research has found to be the largest European real estate transaction in the current cycle, Kennedy Wilson and its institutional partners have just completed the second phase of a $1.8 billion portfolio acquisition.

October 26, 2011
By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Morgan Stanley has found a taker for Saxon Mortgage Services Inc.  Morgan Stanley will sell the residential mortgage loan servicing firm to Ocwen Financial Corp. for $59.3 million–and approximately $1.4 billion for servicing outstanding advance receivables.
Scheduled to close in the first quarter of 2012, the transaction comes five years [...]

Prudential Mortgage Capital has hired Michael McRoberts, the latest in a string of departures from the government-sponsored enterprises, to head its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lending business.

New Boston Fund and Asian Community Development Corp. recently secured city and state funds for the construction of a $130 million, 345-unit mixed-income multi-family property in Boston’s Chinatown.

The four most recent transactions bring GGP’s refinancings to $3.9 billion for the year.

Purchased from a bank in the Midwest, the geographically diverse portfolio is secured by retail, office and industrial assets.

Starwood Property Trust has closed the first four loans of a securitization featuring a principal balance totaling $154.4 million.

CPE editor-in-chief Suzann D. Silverman writes in her August 2011 From the Editor about the talent drain at the GSEs.