Mark Falzone is the executive loan officer at Kennedy Funding
By Joshua Burd
Kennedy Funding has closed on a $1.66 million land loan to a developer seeking to build 69 townhomes outside Dallas, the Englewood-based firm announced last week.
According to the direct private lender, OFS Ventures is using the funds to acquire 9.32 acres of raw land in McKinney, Texas. Proceeds will support part of the $3.3 million purchase price.
“Securing a 9 percent interest rate is a feat in the current market, especially for funding projects as untouchable as raw land,” said Mark Falzone, executive loan officer at Kennedy Funding. “Our ability to secure such favorable rates for OFS Ventures is a testament to our decades of relationship-building and experience working with borrowers to secure raw land deals.”
Alex Caragiannides, who is based in Melville, New York, brokered the transaction and touted Kennedy Funding’s “sound process and methodology” for funding land loans as his reason for calling the firm first on the OFS Ventures opportunity.
“Kennedy Funding is virtually the only lender out there that will fund raw land loans and do so successfully,” Caragiannides said. “No one touches land loans except for Kennedy. They are the experts.”
Kennedy Funding CEO and President Kevin Wolfer added: “Nearly all banks and conventional lenders have blanket policies that automatically refuse to consider any deal that involves raw land. However, we’re able to investigate the merits of each deal and see the opportunity from the borrower’s point of view. Through that lens, we can assess the entirety of the deal. That includes the economic circumstances and trends that influence a project’s success, as they do in this deal involving building housing in a very popular major metro area.”
The lender noted that Dallas-Fort Worth has experienced the most growth among all major United States regions, citing a population that has boomed to 8.1 million in 2023 from 7.6 million in 2020. Major companies such as CBRE, AECOM and Frontier Communications have moved their headquarters to Dallas in recent years, Kennedy said, adding that the region is a hub for culture, sports and a thriving culinary scene.
“As the Dallas-Fort Worth population grows, the need for quality, well-located housing grows, too,” Wolfer said. “The OFS Ventures project will turn this vacant space into a place that dozens of families can call home. Supporting their vision to build housing in this bustling area is a financially wise use of raw land.”
