In a single week, attorneys at Lawson & Moseley closed seven loans totaling about $18.7 million—all guaranteed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Program, which provides funding for improvements in rural areas.
William H. Lawson, the firm's managing partner, said the rush of closings was fueled in part by the federal stimulus package that, according to information on the USDA's Web site, poured additional money into the program and cut front-end loan costs such as guaranty fees.
The stimulus program, he said, helped revive a "virtually nonexistent" secondary market that had guttered during the financial crisis. In the secondary market, a brokerage firm will take the guaranteed portion of a loan and sell it at a premium to pension funds and institutional investors.
"The banks today are very concerned about cash and cash availability," he said, explaining that the revived secondary market has motivated banks to lend because the investors in effect reimburse the bank for the loan, giving it cash that it can use to make additional loans while getting a secure investment for themselves.
Lawson, along with attorneys Heather D. Hestley and Dallas R. Ivey, represented Illinois-based Ridgestone Bank to close five loans totaling about $14.4 million for five limited liability companies in an interrelated purchase and sale of nursing homes in rural southwestern Missouri. Lawson said attorney Sam E. Thomas represented the nursing homes. Thomas was out of town and could not be reached by press time.
The Lawson & Moseley lawyers also closed two other loans totaling $4.3 million, according to Hestley, for lenders Ridgestone Bank and Community Bank & Trust-West Georgia, to fund assisted living facilities in Georgia and Alabama. Lawson said Gregory P. Youra at Holt Ney Zatcoff & Wasserman represented the assisted living facilities. Youra could not be reached by press time.