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Deals still roll on for bank loans
| Saturday, Jun 7 2008 12:00 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Jun 9 2008 7:39 AM
For a local shotgun club, it was $100,000 for the on-site manager’s new house.
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Just a few loans made in 2008 (or shortly before) show folks are moving ahead with a variety of projects these days ... large, small and interesting. Information is from public records filed with the Kern County Recorder’s office.
$8 million
Borrower: Canyon Hills Assembly of God Church
$14.8 million
Borrower: Bakersfield Scenic River LLC of Clovis, by Peter Herzog for a seniors apartment project along Scenic River Lane near Coffee Road and Meany Avenue in northwest Bakersfield.
Lender: Wells Fargo Bank
$248,500
Borrower: Load Star Investments by David A. Roderick and Joe Landsden III against 21500 Westwood Blvd. in Tehachapi
Lender: Mojave Desert Bank
$1.8 million
Borrower: Downing Road Properties LLC by Shannon, Brandon and Gene Roberson, John S. Wall, Larry Peake, Christopher Clark and Denise Clark against acreage at 7900 Downing Ave. near the intersection with Coffee Road in northwest Bakersfield.
Lender: United Security Bank
$3.1 million
Borrower: Bakersfield Christian High School
Lender: Wells Fargo Bank
$250,000 revolving line of credit
Borrower: B’nai Jacob Congregation of Bakersfield California by Oscar Rudnick and Maxine Schwartz against the temple at 600 17th St.
Lender: San Joaquin Bank
$80 million
Borrower: Vaquero Partners I LP by Kenneth H. Hunter III against numerous oil leases
Lender: Wells Fargo Bank
$13 million
Borrower: GEM Discovery Plaza LLC by Howard D. Kootstra against offices at 1200 Discovery Drive off California Avenue, near Mohawk.
Lender: Rabobank
$11.8 million
Borrower: Meridian Calloway LLC of Palo Alto by John J. Pollock and Philip E. Malouf against vacant land near the southwest intersection of Calloway Drive and Noriega Road in northwest Bakersfield
Lender: Greater Bay Bank
$5.5 million Borrower: Gourmet Blueberry-California LLC of Los Angeles by Christopher Martin against vineyard acreage near McFarland
Lender: California Bank & Trust
Sources: Kern County Recorder, California Secretary of State, Kerndata.com
$5.6 billion: Total deposits in Kern County’s federally insured banks and savings and loans as of June 30, 2007
$750.8 billion: Total deposits in California
$3.1 billion: Kern’s deposits a decade earlier, in June 1997
22: Number of banks and savings institutions operating in Kern as of June 2007
92: Total offices of the 22 institutions
3: Kern headquarters of the 22 institutions
Source: Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
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For a Fresno County developer, it was $14.8 million for seniors apartments in northwest Bakersfield.
Loans small and hefty continue to be made for Kern County projects even in the tough financial market, public records of debt backed by property show.
Since January, for example, Bakersfield’s San Joaquin Bank has funded deals ranging from the Kern County Gun Club’s management quarters — secured by property on Shotgun Road, of course — to $7.5 million for a residential project in northwest Bakersfield.
Mission Bank, also headquartered in Bakersfield, loaned a San Francisco company more than $500,000 in March to buy office buildings on Brundage Lane.
Supersize banks such as Wells Fargo, midsize lenders including Rabobank and investors like Cascade Acceptance Corp., meanwhile, bankrolled big-ticket items: $80 million for an oil development firm; $13 million borrowed against an office complex off California Avenue; and $25 million for the Canyons LLC residential project in northeast Bakersfield, respectively.
Richard Fanucchi, Mission Bank’s president and chief executive, said he’s still making business and construction loans.
“There seems to be a strong demand for industrial property” among small and mid-size businesses, Fanucchi said.
Business customers have reported sluggish retail sales, he said, and some fear things could get worse as fuel prices rise and consumers tighten up.
But borrowers have made good on loans.
“So far, we have not noticed anything negative in terms of ability to pay,” Fanucchi said.
Mission Bank, which turns 10 in October, has about $163 million in total assets — loans and other profit-generating bits on a bank’s books — and as of last June had nearly 2.3 percent of bank deposits held in Kern, according to the most recent federal deposit report available.
In all, almost $5.6 billion was deposited in Kern County banks and savings institutions as of June 2007, filings with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. show.
Of the 22 FDIC-insured institutions operating in Kern, just three — Mission, San Joaquin and Mojave Desert Bank — are headquartered here.
Community banks such as Mission, San Joaquin and Mojave Desert generally don’t keep home mortgages on their books and have been spared much direct fallout from the mortgage crisis.
Still, they feel impacts as the small businesses they typically lend to are impacted by the building slowdown, rising fuel prices and squeezed consumers.
Officials at Mojave Desert Bank could not be reached Friday. The bank has about $81 million in assets, federal filings show, and operates branches in Mojave, Ridgecrest, California City and two nearby sites across county lines.
San Joaquin Bank, with $908 million in assets and more than 12 percent of the local market’s deposits, is by far the largest of the three.
Stephen Annis, the bank’s chief financial officer, said managers knew 2008 “was going to be a very tough year.”
A conservative lending policy — for land development loans, for example, the bank never puts up more than 50 to 60 percent of core appraised value, he said — means there’s a built-in cushion even as property values decline.
Though the county assessor, Jim Fitch, announced earlier this year his office would lower property values for about 40,000 homes, Annis isn’t worried.
“I don’t know that the assessor’s action is of a great deal of concern to us,” he said.
Loan demand was strong in the first quarter but has slowed toward the end of the second, Annis said.
That’s a good thing, he added.
Banks have to monitor loan portfolios carefully to make sure they don’t outgrow the capital they need to back loans up.
“In today’s environment,” Annis said, “capital is very difficult to come by.”
All in all, he said, things are going well in 2008.
“We’re right in line with where we hoped we would be,” he said.