Just realized something at the county clerk's office while looking at property records

I was in there yesterday pulling docs for a client's portfolio. Saw a bunch of filings for cross-collateralized commercial loans on a single strip mall. The structure notes showed the debt was layered with separate mezzanine financing from a private lender, all secured against the same asset. It was a mess on paper, but the payoff schedule they had attached made it super clear how the cash flow was allocated. Made me think, for super complex deals, maybe the public filing is the best 'cheat sheet' to reverse-engineer the terms. Anyone else ever used recorded documents to figure out a loan's actual structure?

3 comments

3 Comments

grace50826d ago

Oh totally, I do that all the time with multi-family deals. The actual recorded intercreditor agreement is the only thing that shows you the real waterfall, you know? I once saw a filing where the second lien was actually getting paid before the first on certain cash flows, which you'd never guess from just the term sheet.

the_piper26d ago

That's a wild find. I saw a deal last year where the mezz piece had a 15% catch-up payment before the senior even got a dollar on the sale. You're right, the term sheet just said "standard waterfall" and it was anything but.

palmer.richard24d ago

What's a standard waterfall even mean anymore?