Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Benjamin Martin, Senior VP, Commercial Lending with Collegiate Peaks Bank

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

A Colorado native, I have been in Denver’s banking community since 2001, serving both consumer and commercial clients. I’ve had the opportunity to work for both large and small banking institutions, and feel that community banking embodies my desire to help and reinvest my talents in the Denver area. I enjoy working with all types and sizes of clients in a variety of industries.Outside of banking, I have a passion for the outdoors; I love to downhill and back-country ski, camp, mountain bike, climb Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks, and coach soccer.Learn more: https://www.collegiatepeaksbank.comColorado Real Estate Leaders https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/colorado-real-estate-leaders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-benjamin-martin-senior-vp-commercial-lending-with-collegiate-peaks-bank

Welcome to the Colorado Real Estate Leaders Podcast, brought to you by Trailstone Insurance Group, bringing you interviews with Colorado's best real estate and mortgage professionals, empowering you to understand the current trends in the housing market so you can make the American dream your reality. Enjoy today's episode. Well, it's a great day in Colorado and welcome to the Colorado Real Estate Leaders podcast. Today we have with this Benjamin Martin, who's the senior VP and commercial lending at Collegiate Peaks Bank. Benjamin, welcome to the program.

Hello, thanks for having me. Hey, you're welcome. So I always love when we talk about unique aspects of the real estate industry, and I think that commercial lending is quite a big, broad topic. So I'm excited to learn from you. Get us started with your story and background. What is your background, and how did you get into commercial lending? Yeah, so I started in banking in 2001.

My final interview to get into the industry was on 9-11. And as a 22-year-old kid, I wasn't paying attention to a lot of things. And, you know, I showed up for the interview and everybody had this. There was an air of panic and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. But, you know, as they told me what had happened, they said, you know, the industry is going to change. And we're going to offer you the job, but just know that, you know, things are not going to look the same from a banking perspective of what you probably know. known in the past, oh, I'm 22, so I don't really know what I'm getting into, but that was, that's kind of where I started in the retail side of banking. So solely moved, moved my way up,

managed some offices around the country. And I'm from Colorado originally. And so after probably about 10 years around, I came back and moved into commercial lending as an analyst. That was 2007. So I not only got to experience all the aftermath of 9-11 as it related to the banking world, but also, you know, the impending crash that happened about six months after I started. So there was well-seasoned. Two major issues for the banking industry there. Yeah. And then so you transitioned into commercial lending. You were a commercial analyst around 2007.

And when did you transition into the lending side? So, yeah, that was my first foray into commercial lending. And then I moved up as an analyst. I worked for a couple of different banks that the one that I started with in 2007, failed in about 2011. And then ended up as an analyst at Wells Fargo, moved kind of downstream into a community bank in Lakewood. and was promoted to the system by the president as a commercial lender in 2013, so just about six years. So you have seen a lot of different things happening in between bank failures and everything else. So it gives you some great perspective, I'm sure.

Yeah, it's been, you know, I talked to a lot of lenders and credit officers and folks that have been in the industry for as long as I've been alive. and, you know, they talk about the number of recessions that they have left and all the things that have been thrown at, you know, the economy as a whole. But, you know, banking is one of those staples as kind of the backbone of the economy. And, you know, we have to pivot, you know, obviously through catastrophe and good times and bad times and, you know, being able to be there to take care of our clients. So obviously the most recent was COVID. And that was turned everybody on their on their heads, not just in the banking world, right? So. Sure. So you've had a wide variety of experiences and different roles and everything. So what do you like most about what you're doing now in your profession? Yeah. I mean, I think I've been a banker since I was five years old. So I was lending money to my siblings and learning quickly that that was probably not the best idea. Were you the banker in Monopoly as well? I was very much so. I got a picture of when I was, you know, probably about three. year four and I had a vest and a tie on and just seemed to make sense. So there are a lot of people that just fall into the industry, but I feel like it's always been a part of me. And, you know, being from Denver, being a, being a Colorado native, the thing that I love the most is just

watching, watching it grow. I'm watching businesses succeed as part of least my efforts and what I do and just watching the greater Denver area and obviously how Colorado benefit from small business and how banking can, you know, provide that service versus being a hindrance to progress. So talk a little bit about the difference between residential lending and commercial lending, because I know that any time you hear, oh, it's Zoom commercial, or, you know, there's a lot of different tiers and levels of commercial properties. And I know that probably the underwriting guidelines are vastly different. Yeah, from a lot of it's, driven from a regulatory standpoint. So obviously having the experience we had through 2000,

I've got a lot of trucks going by, you know, going through what happened in 2007 and a lot of the consumer lending laws and regulations have changed. And, you know, it's a lot of those changes were intended to protect consumers. And, you know, I guess where the residential versus commercial comes from, you know, very much single family lending. to individuals to be able to buy, you know, primary residences and, you know, looking at home equity lines of credit, you know, consumer, you know, as you're looking at auto loans and those types of things. As commercial goes, primarily focused on, you know, companies and, you know, obviously real estate transactions from, you know, whether it's warehouse or industrial, retail, multi-family office, a lot of of those types of asset classes. So, you know, residential is much more focused on the, you know, maybe it's the one to four families or, you know, an occasional investment single family property.

But as commercial goes, it's seems like everything else, right? So there's, you know, land and all the other asset classes that I listed before. Yeah. So let's think about something. when you were working with a borrower helping them with a commercial lending project, what is that project typically looking like? In residential, it's like I'm helping people either buy the first home, buy an investment property, or refinance their home. So there's a few of those, but what is a typical commercial project look like? It's what I love about what I do.

It feels like there's nothing that's typical. But I work with a lot of local companies that may be renting their space and we all know what's been happening in the rental market, both on the residential on the commercial side. And so, you know, we had the opportunity of helping companies buy maybe it's a warehouse to expand operations or a retail operation who wants to expand as well. Or, you know, a normal operating company that just has tired of paying exorbitant rent and wants to be their own landlord. You know, I think from a commercial real estate standpoint, you know, as investors go, there's a lot of different forms that that takes.

And so, you know, it can be, you know, a real estate investor that may want to buy a multifamily property and add some value to it and, you know, update some, you know, carpet and painting and, you know, increase rents and that type of stuff. But it's also, you know, maybe somebody owns a strip center, you know, or, like said, an office building. And so those are typically the transactions that we see. We've also been doing, collegiate has been pretty active in the residential construction world. So we'll work with home builders that are maybe doing an infill project where there's a, you know, a house that needs to be torn down and put up something, you know, fancy and new.

And we'll finance part of that project as well. You know, I love how you described from your very beginning, you know, day one of the interview at 9-11. And then you mentioned the 07, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, whatever time frame that is of the, you know, economic crash of the housing market. And then we've come through COVID. There's these spikes in the economy that cause ripple effects, positive or negative, to the economy and mortgage lending and commercial lending. And one question is, given what we've come through with COVID and more and more people going with, hey, you know what, let's go virtual, let's go remote. maybe that's going to impact the commercial market. What are you seeing with the commercial market as it relates to, you know,

forecast and future and, you know, is it going to be a blip and dip in the economy and it's going to come back, you know, kind of like the housing market did? Or do you find that people are now going to need to get pretty creative in their commercial, you know, property and, and, up to any commercial properties? Yeah, of course. I think the biggest impact that we've seen as a result of COVID and the remote versus, you know, in office, the office market is in certain segments. I've talked to a lot of commercial brokers and, you know, it's a lot of, a lot of them are kind of just sitting on their hands right now because there's, you know, especially downtown, there's a lot of vacancies and, you know, slowly but surely, I think companies are bringing their workers back, you know, as you're looking at different generations and obviously, some of the younger have been, you know, more accustomed to working remote.

I think suburban office has bounced back a little bit better, you know, as people are moving out of, you know, potentially moving out of downtown. There's still a lot of companies that are moving here, but they're, you know, kind of in the outskirts. So some are moving into Adams County, you know, some into Boulder County. You know, Cherry Creek office has been really strong. I think that's it's kind of an anomaly when it, as it relates to, you know, overall office. But, you know, a lot of my clients have workers coming back and they're able to come into the office. And, you know, not much of that has changed, but I think the biggest impact in the office asset class and multifamily, obviously, as well, with respect to people being able to afford rents now. And those have continued to go up.

And we're hoping that they stabilize a little bit just from an affordability standpoint. But those have been the biggest impact, I think, in the, at least in the commercial real estate world. You know, industrial and warehouse, I think, remain pretty strong. But, you know, like everything else, it feels like the supply is limited. And that's changed quite a bit over the last, call it 11, you know, 11 or 12 years since, you know, marijuana was legalized here in Colorado. A lot of that warehouse was taken up. But we're starting to see some of that open up as that is. has declined a little bit.

Is there a certain sector in commercial properties and lending that you feel is going to come back sooner than other sectors? Because I do feel that some people are just going to go, you know what? We're walking away from this sector. But, wow, whenever you push down on a seesaw, the other side comes up. So where one sector might not come back strong, another one might, you know, revive and come to life. What are you seeing in that respect? Absolutely.

seeing retail bounce back. I mean, if we rewind three years, retail was something that nobody wanted a part of because, you know, they were restricted of how many people were allowed in their shops or, you know, if it was a restaurant, you know, they had to pivot. And obviously a lot of closures with restaurants or the retail over the last three years, but that's that's bouncing back pretty strong. We've been, you know, like anything, like you mentioned with the seesaw, you know, people in retail have pivoted. pretty well and adapted to, I'm not going to call it the new normal by any stretch, but I think as people have backed away from office, some have tried to convert those to multifamily. And then, you know, obviously with retail and new services and goods being presented as progress goes in the city, retails from what I've heard from all my commercial real estate brokers and contacts, that's bounced back stronger than I think anybody really anticipated. So, yeah, I mean, door gets closed on one asset class and then it gets opened up in a brand new one. So there was, you know, as a result of COVID, there was a lot of money that was hanging out on the sidelines because nobody knew what was going to be happening.

And now, you know, as that kind of gets flooded back into the market, you know, being able to find inventory. But some of those, there's a lot of types of properties that are still relatively strong, but I know there's plenty of investors that are backing away from. you know in some ways multifamily and some you know obviously with office but it's also kind of you know sub-market driven so there are other places like Colorado Springs that are just hitting the in the ball out of the park so to speak so still very very strong markets in and around the metro yeah there's never one stock you know cookie cutter this is the way it always is you're going have a pocket here and a pocket there, and I think that's awesome. You know, I think a lot of times when people say, you know, I'm really proud about my career because we have seen this or

accomplished that. What are some of the proud moments that you've seen over the course of your career other than what I would surmise as being tenacious of persevered through all of those blips over the years? But what other proud moments have you seen in your career? Yeah, I think I have a long list of clients that, you know, maybe it started out with a small, you know, $10,000 line of credit. And, you know, that expanded into a half a million dollar line of credit and buying some equipment and then being able to ultimately buy their own real estate. And a lot of, you know, a lot of business owners and real estate owners are really proud of what they, what they own. And being able to be a part of that and serve my clients and finding ways to help them

has been really, really just fantastic for me. And it's, you know, it trickles down to every part of the economy where, you know, I have a company that we financed there. It was actually an office building in central Denver. They're going to be able to occupy and expand their operations. And it wouldn't have been possible had I probably not been not tenacious enough. But I, you know, I pushed really hard because, They care about my clients.

And, you know, they're paying their employees that they can put food on the table and, you know, creating jobs in and around Denver. So those are, you know, those stories get, you know, put to life really around opportunities in the city. And I can say that I'm really proud of that. And the second answer would be through COVID and the payroll protection.

program where, you know, I work for a small bank, drink through that. We were able to fund a good amount of PPP loans and, you know, keeping people paid through one of the most, you know, challenging economic times, at least in my career and in a lot of others as well. And what I hear from that is we don't just look at numbers and papers and transactions. We look at people. And we love to see the stories behind and the results and the transformation of the people and that's what you want to hear from a banker. So I think that is spectacular, Ben. Yep. Yep. That's what I love about what I do. Well, if someone is interested in learning more and connecting with you, what's the best way they can do that? Yeah. So our, I have all my contact

information at our website, which is collegiate peaks bank.com. And I work in the River North office, so we're just off of 36th and Brighton Boulevard. So we're smack dab. tweet about 46 construction projects and watching our area grow. We're just a little tiny office that's surrounded by a lot of industry that's come on this this way. So we're in River North right next to a doggie daycare. And best way to reach me is obviously by phone and like I said, all my contact information through our website that I met at Ben.

dot Martin at collegiate peaksbank.com, the email and direct numbers 303, 481, 1358. So that's usually the best way to get a hold of me. Awesome, Ben. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today. Yeah, thank you again for having me. Thank you for listening to the Colorado Real Estate Leaders podcast, brought to you by Trailstone Insurance Group. To learn more about the topics mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com. Colorado real estate leaders.com.