Earlsfort Capital Partners (ECP), a leading non-bank property lender today announced the completion of their 13th transaction with Castlelake, L.P. (“Castlelake”), a global alternative investment manager with 17 years of experience investing in asset-rich opportunities, bringing the total principal balance of loans advanced to property investors through the partnership to over €300 million over the past 18 months.
These transactions include the recent closing of an €80 million facility to refinance a 300,000 sq ft Dublin commercial & residential portfolio for Cosgrave Property Group and a €23.1 million facility to refinance 70,000 sq ft of new build Grade A office space at Bonham Quay, Galway, for Gerry Barrett’s Edward Capital.
Earlsfort Real Estate Finance DAC was launched in February 2021 by ECP with support from Castlelake and typically provides investment loan facilities with terms of three to five years and loan-to-value ratios of up to 75 per cent. ECP can provide loans quickly and with a full and dedicated focus on their clients’ needs and goals (with an average of 2-4 weeks to credit approval and 4-6 weeks to drawdown).
Paul Brophy, co-founder of ECP, said, “We are very pleased to have reached this milestone with our partners and friends at Castlelake. It has been a pleasure to do business with them over the past year and a half and the fact that we have reached this significant achievement together is a testament to the strength of our client partnerships. From the very first conversation we have with a potential borrower or introducer to closing a deal, we give certainty to our clients through the complete journey of financing a real estate project and this has been increasingly evident over the last year in the business we have done with Castlelake.”
Founded in 2014, ECP has issued over €1.4 billion of loan facilities secured by a wide range of properties including residential, office, industrial, hospitality and student housing. Earlsfort’s business has a special focus on providing real estate debt capital in Ireland and the UK with an experienced team operating out of Dublin, London and Boston.
According to Paul Brophy, “Despite the fast changing economic and interest rate environment globally, our pipeline remains robust with our capital in more demand as traditional lenders step back from the market. Our mutually commercial approach to risk and underwriting will allow us to sensibly build on the progress of the past 18 months.”
He added, “The past two years of global health crisis, lockdowns and supply chain disruptions have been challenging for clients across sectors. It prompted many businesses to rethink their activity, their working space and how to maximize their assets. New hybrid working, rebalancing of tourism with increased domestic travel, increased demand for logistics and the continued growth of online retail are some of the trends we see shaping the commercial real estate space over the next few years. More than ever, businesses need partners that take the time to really understand their needs and provide tailored support in this fast-evolving environment.”
Castlelake was founded in 2005 and has invested more than $13 billion in real assets opportunities since its inception, including investments in transitional real estate, infrastructure, and sub- and non-performing loans across Europe and the U.S. It specializes in capital constrained or niche hard assets and loan portfolios where the firm believes it can address capital dislocation or unlock value from complex situations.
“We are pleased to have partnered with Earlsfort Capital Partners to meet the needs of borrowers in the Ireland and UK markets,” said Philipp Braschel, Partner at Castlelake. “The steady cadence of our investment activity with Earlsfort is a testament to our combined team on the ground in Dublin and London and their ability to provide market insight.”
In November, Castlelake announced that it completed the final closing of Castlelake Income Opportunities II, L.P. (“CIO II”), with approximately $782 million in capital commitments. CIO II seeks to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns with less correlation to and less volatility than the public markets and expands on Castlelake’s commitment to identifying opportunities in asset-backed financing in both the United States and Europe.