Arkansas Business

According to real estate records, 54 of the 133 units have sold. Jimmy Moses and Rett Tucker are the movers behind the 1.2-acre development at 315 River Market Ave.

Moses said he doesn’t know much about their new lender.

“We haven’t been dealing with them long, but they seem like reasonable folks,” he said. “We had a chance to meet several of their executives. They like Little Rock and think it has a bright future. They’ve been here a lot looking during the past year.”

• The Holcombe Heights mortgage was modified and extended twice in 2008 and once in 2010 and 2011 by Metropolitan before Broe purchased it.

The 6-acre development is owned by McFadden One LLC, led by Bess McFadden Sanders. Other members of the ownership group are Todd and Chris Bridges, sons of Metropolitan CEO Lunsford Bridges.

The apartment project was acquired for $6.4 million in June 2007 with an eye toward condo conversion. But that idea was shelved and the project remained as multifamily.

“We decided it just wasn’t a good time to take that amount of risk,” Todd Bridges, a member of the limited liability company, said in a September 2008 interview with Arkansas Business. “I don’t see the economy coming back until 2010. We didn’t want to get out there with a condo project right now.”

Holcombe Heights was purchased from an investment group that included Paul Tibbs, James Tibbs, Andrew Tibbs, Jimmy Moses, Rett Tucker, Denise Martin and Chris Moses. They purchased the property for $5.5 million in January 2006.

• The Riverbend town home project in North Little Rock was sold at auction by Metropolitan National Bank for $1.8 million.

The bank financed 100 percent of the sale with a loan to B&L Osborne Investments LLC, led by Bob Osborne. Metropolitan recovered the property from Riverview Luxury Townhomes and Crystal Condominiums Inc., both led by Eutaw Horton and Osborne.

Bob Jacobs, chief investment officer for The Broe Group, talked about the investment opportunities afforded by the real estate crash at the National Association of Real Estate Editors Conference in Denver last year.

“There are a lot of former developers and real estate owners who are now much less wealthy than they used to be and have been dragged through the dirt,” Jacobs said. “There are a lot of guys who have experienced the crash, and I think there is a lot more to come.”

He said some banks had been slow to recognize their losses because they don’t have the capital needed to absorb the losses.

“There are a lot of hidden assets underneath the table …,” Jacobs said. “It may not be as high-profile and political as the single-family [residential] bust has been, but it’s still there.”