Who did you meet with today?
On our final blog day, we met with 3 people from the City National Bank. These include Dena Harte (SVP, Commercial Banking), Simon Wu (VP & Credit Solutions), and Skylar Tsimmerman (Credit Analyst II). All these people and their teams work together to approve loans for commercial lending. These people play pivotal roles in the real estate industry. They analyze if a property is going to be profitable and is going to be able to pay back their loans.
Where do they work? What does the company do?
Dena Harte, Simon Wu, and Skylar Tsimmerman work for City National Bank. City National Bank provides financial services to personal, private, or commercial clients. They offer a variety of services such as Wealth Management or Treasury Management. Today we had an emphasis on Loans & Credit, especially for Commercial and Real Estate.
What did you learn today? What were some highlights?
Today we learned about the bank’s perspective of when a business asks for a loan for a property. The method of analysis is different for each business. For example, if the business is industrial, then the bank looks at if the property is already situated in an industrial part of a city and if it is near areas with transportation infrastructure such as an airport, or nearby freeways. A highlight is the bank’s consideration of whether a building can be repurposed after the business tenant leaves. An example of this would be gas stations, because gas stations have gas tanks underground. That means that the plot of land would be a lot harder to repurpose into another building later on.
What insights did you gain into the field of real estate development?
The insights I’ve gained about this field of real estate development is that it is the key to everything. When you don’t have sufficient funds, you can’t build. It is important to be able to sell your idea to the bank and be able to answer the bank’s questions about your business. “Is this business profitable?”, or “Does this property have other tenants that compete with your business?”. Ultimately, banks want your business to succeed. If you are successful, that means your bank is getting the money on your loan.
What did you find the most interesting about the field in the field after today?
The most interesting thing about the field is the consideration of ethics. You don’t want to be that one bank who closes schools. It gives the bank a bad reputation, and banks must consider that while lending. If public goodwill is lost, then clients might retaliate against the bank and it would be huge issue.
