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BANKER & TRADESMAN
FEBRUARY 3, 2014
In Person
Banking On A Good Loan BY LAURA ALIX | BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF WRITER
You could say real estate is in Carroll Lowenstein’s blood. The Arlington native says just about his entire family is in the real estate business. After getting his broker’s license at 18 and doing a stint at U.S. Bank, Lowenstein headed up commercial lending at Cambridgeport Bank for 15 years. When Citizens Bank acquired Cambridgeport in 2003, he stayed on under Robert M. Mahoney’s leadership. Two weeks after Mahoney took the helm at Belmont Savings Bank in 2010, he called up Lowenstein and said, “We need you here.” In the three years since, Lowenstein and his team have booked about $500 million in new business, bringing the bank to a little more than $1 billion in assets.
Carroll Lowenstein
Title: Executive Vice President, Commercial Real Estate Lending,
Belmont Savings Bank Age: 54 Experience: 35 years
Q:
Q:
A:
A:
What’s changed at Belmont Savings since you took over the commercial lending division? The loan amounts were much smaller then because the bank was smaller. You could only lend a certain portion of your capital. They were all good loans. We just brought in a whole different type of borrower. We still bank all the borrowers we used to, and we absolutely have not forgotten about those bread-and-butter customers who have made us successful over our 130 years. But we also now lend to professional commercial real estate owners, operators, developers, people who wake up every day and their job is commercial real estate. Most of them are family-based, they own four, five, six different properties, and that’s what they do every day. They’re very hands on, very involved in their real estate, whether it’s an apartment building, office building, retail shopping center, they know their tenants. We do a lot of construction lending for single-family homes, small condominium projects, larger apartment buildings. We’ve probably tripled the size of the loans we can make now just because the bank is bigger and we have a lot more expertise in what we do.
What kind of challenges are you anticipating in the year
ahead?
I guess one of the biggest challenges that is still faced by mostly younger people is: When will you be able to buy a home? And how long will you have to live in an apartment? How long will the apartment boom continue? It might have changed permanently. You may decide, “I don’t really want to own a home. I want to be more mobile. If I get a job offer in Tennessee, I don’t want to have to sell my home before I go. Pay a few months rent and move.” There is a growing population like that. But the housing market is still exceptionally strong. We live in probably the best part of the country for that. I do think there’s also growing demand for much more maintenancefree housing. As people age, they still want a single-family home, but they don’t want expenses of $30,000 a year to take care of it. I think there will be a trend for more efficient, maintenance-free housing.
Q:
Is CRE lending easier at a community bank?
A:
It’s more the levels of approval at the other places, and you have to do it that way. You couldn’t let the people out in the suburbs make the decisions on approving loans. It has to go through the process. And we have a very similar process here, but it’s much more efficient because all the people are here in the building. We get consensus early on, that way we can deliver exactly what we promised from the beginning. We approved a number of loans yesterday, the commitment letters are already out, the customers have already been notified, we’ll tweak a few things, Bob and I’ll talk about it, and we’ll get it done. It works, the process works. I’ve always told people, we’re the biggest small bank you’ll ever see. Most of us are overqualified for our jobs, but this is what we want to do. We want to actually make things happen and make decisions. The major diff here is, the buck stops with me. I’m the one who makes the final decision ultimately. It’s all on me, which is what I want. Good or bad, I understand it’s my responsibility.
CARROLL LOWENSTEIN’S TOP FIVE GOLF COURSES:
1
The Winchester Country Club (Massachusetts)
2
The Mid-Ocean Club (Bermuda)
3
Yeaman’s Hall Club (Charleston, S.C.)
4
Pine Valley Golf Club (New Jersey)
5
Merion Golf Club (Pennsylvania)