Armada Employees in Attendance
At the Manchester Grand Hyatt in sunny San Diego from February 13th-15th, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will host their 22nd annual Commercial Real Estate Finance (CREF) conference. MBA CREF offers those in commercial real estate asset management, commercial real estate underwriting, mortgage bankers, loan producers, and everyone in the field of CRE finance a great opportunity to network with their peers, learn from industry experts and power players, and collaborate on solutions to their most pressing problems.
Armada Analytics is especially excited to be attending this year’s conference and hear from the impressive lineup of speakers that MBA has scheduled—we’re secretly hoping that Rita Moreno will let us all know why she wants to be in America in song one more time at this year’s conference. (Rumor has it that the 90-year-old Moreno can still cha-cha with the best of them.)
All of Armada’s divisions will be at MBA CREF this year:
- Andrew DiGirolamo is eager to share his insights as they pertain to Armada’s commercial asset management services. As a company that deals in all CRE property types, DiGirolamo especially looks forward to the conversations he’ll have with other asset and portfolio managers, along with servicers attending the conference.
- Becky Browning, who leads Armada’s Loan Closing and Insurance Review department, is looking forward to discussing the latest trends in CRE insurance with industry-leading lenders and investors.
- Our Commercial Real Estate Underwriting team, the foundation on which Armada was built, anticipates fruitful conversations with other CRE underwriters. Led by David Martin and Heath Phillips, our underwriters execute four distinct categories of commercial realty underwriting: agency underwriting (our group has underwritten thousands of multifamily loans for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac); balance sheet underwriting (we work with balance sheet lenders prescreening loans); CMBS underwriting (servicing CMBS and SFR portfolio lenders, B-piece investors, property owners, and brokerage firms); and FHA underwriting for HUD-insured multifamily and senior housing.
- Finally, Zack Toates from Zoning will be at MBA CREF this year to demonstrate our expertise in this domain. Stop by booth 306 to learn more about our various zoning reports and how we can work with your team.
VendorFlow
One major reason we’re particularly enthused to be attending MBA CREF this February is because this will be the occasion for us to introduce our new product, VendorFlow.
Armada will launch VendorFlow this March, which offers lenders the ability to automate and streamline their engagement with third-party vendors to enhance engagement during the process of Underwriting deals.
As a firm with decades of experience in the analysis of Multifamily Commercial Real Estate, we recognize the importance of efficiency in the process of closing loans for our clients. We’re always on the lookout for pain points in performing due diligence on CRE properties. After speaking with other industry leaders, we realized that one of the major challenges for lenders in underwriting involves the coordination of vendors.
The hassle of emailing third-party vendors individually, ensuring that they arrive onsite with minimal tenant disruption, and checking to make sure that third-party reports agree on salient facts causes needless headaches and delays.
Rather than engaging all of the vendors you need to complete the underwriting process, lenders can simply place their orders through VendorFlow’s CRM form, which generates and sends bids to vendors. Following the collection of bids, Armada’s system sends a report back to the lender to select their preferred bids.
Then, VendorFlow coordinates onsite inspections from vendors and delivers a Site Inspection Memo to the Borrower. Finally, it checks in on vendors to make sure that reports are delivered on time, sending you all third-party reports along with an initial Salient Fact Grid.
