Kevin Wolfer, CEO and president of Kennedy Funding
By Joshua Burd
Kennedy Funding has closed more than $2.6 million in financing for the expansion of a condominium community in eastern Brazil.
The direct private lender, which is based in Englewood Cliffs, said the borrower will use the $2.633 million loan for working capital toward the last phase of the project known as Recanto das Flores Urbamais. The development site is located in Feira de Santana, a growing city in one of Brazil’s largest states.
“It’s virtually unheard of to close a land loan abroad, let alone one in a region as complicated and fragile as Brazil,” said Kevin Wolfer, CEO and president of Kennedy Funding. “It may have appeared on paper that we had all factors working against us, but thanks to our experience in South America’s real estate market, we were able to close and get the borrower the funding necessary to start construction.”
In a news release Thursday, Kennedy Funding noted that Recanto das Flores Urbamais is a residential development sitting on 417 acres in the city’s Nova Esperança neighborhood. The community is made up of 250 low-income condos, while borrower BRMF LLC of Brazil plans to develop an additional 75 homes on an undeveloped tract as part of an expansion plan.
Roughly 70 percent of the units have been sold so far.
“Conventional lenders only look at liquid assets when making a loan, but we look beyond the current value of the land,” Wolfer said. “We can review the borrower’s plans and follow a property’s trajectory from raw land to a fully built and successful development.”
Wolfer also pointed to the need for low-income housing in the city and the state of Bahia.
“Bahia is growing in both population and economy, and is home to nearly 15 million people and some of the largest agricultural producers in cattle, sheep, cocoa, coconuts and other crops and animals,” Wolfer said. “Low-income housing is a necessity as Feira de Santana, one of the biggest cities in the region, continues to grow and prosper.”