Newcastle Investment acquires mfg housing loans
By MortgageDaily.com staff
1/25/2005

Newcastle Investment Corp. acquired a multimillion-dollar portfolio of manufactured home loans.

The $310 million portfolio consists of approximately 7,600 seasoned loans secured by manufactured homes located throughout the nation, the New York-based real estate investment trust announced Friday.

While Newcastle expects to long-term finance the investment in upcoming months, two investment banks are initially providing $223 million of one-year debt to fund the acquisition, Newcastle said.

"In the current investment environment, we continue to find attractive investment opportunities to deploy capital," company president Kenneth Riis said in the announcement. "We believe this investment offers excellent risk adjusted returns as we continue to grow and diversify our balance sheet."

The weighted average coupon is 9.06%, the loans are approximately 47 months seasoned with an average remaining term of 256 months, and have a current weighted average FICO score of over 700. All loans were current at the time of purchase, the REIT reported.

In an unrelated transaction, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance Inc. recently picked up a $4 billion manufactured housing portfolio from Chase Home Finance, who wished to exit the manufactured home-lending market.

Article © MortgageDaily.com All Rights Reserved