Ride This Lending Wave Before It Crashes

JLL managing director Dave Hendrickson gets his kicks navigating the big waves inwater-skiing. So the tumultuous lending markets are right up his alley. He says get your loans in before October.

Fresh off a "Dream Week" at Gordon Rathbun's Ski Paradise in Acapulco, the head of JLL's Midwest investment banking group says banks are injecting tons of fresh capital into the lending markets. With short-term rates near zero and banks lending at 3% to 4%, they have been using huge profitsto lend back out or deal with old legacy issues (banks hold half the outstanding CRE debt in the country, or $1.5 trillion). Dave would advise borrowers to act in the first nine months of the year, because life companies ran pretty dry in Q4 '12, and that is likely to happen again. Also treasuries will increase slowly, rates will be a little higher later in the year, and less capital will be available for the best deals.

On his Mexico getaway, Dave water skied and drank margaritas with the top four ranked water skiers in the world. He compares it to playing a week of golf with Tiger and Phil Mickelson. Above, he's with Thomas Degasperi, one of his coaches and a contestant on Dancing With the Stars.Dave first strapped on skis at age 10 and started competing about five years ago. We have a feeling Dave's balance and stability on both water and land were instrumental in propelling the Palmer House Hilton's $365M refinance late last year.