Viking's Healey picks Investors Bank over 'stiff' national lenders

Investors Bank, Robbinsville, N.J., has beefed up its South Jersey and Philadelphia-area commercial real estate portfolio since spreading into the area with its recent acquisition of Trenton-based Roma Savings Bank.

Investors' senior vice president Timothy J. Touhey (former head of the politically-visible NJ Builders' Association) says his South Jersey region of the bank has pumped $124.5 million into refinancing five apartment complexes owned by Robert (Sr.) and William Healey's Viking Associates: $42.5 million for Cherry Hill Towers (NJ); $31.5 million for The Commons at Fallsington (Morrisville, Pa., just across the river); $25 million for Governor Sproul Apartments, Broomall; $16 million for Wellington Woods, Morrisville; $9.5 million for Amity Gardens, Morrisville.

The Healeys banked with CoreStates-First Union-Wachovia but left when Wells Fargo took over five years ago: Big lenders including Wells Fargo "are not interested in commercial banking in this part of the country. They've become rigid," Viking founder Robert Healey Sr. told me. "I've found the intermediate banks have really taken over the market in commercial lending. Investors Bank is a typucal example. They're the people who have taken over the market."

Healey and Viking are big names in South Jersey business: the family owns Viking Yachts Inc. in Egg Harbor, and in 2012 sold its Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale natural gas exporation business to Magnum Energy for $107 million, according to Healey. He's been using the proceeds to support Catholic schools in the Camden, Philadelphia and Allentown dioceses, among other charities.

How'd he find Investors? "We got in contact with them through some mortgage brokers and other banks who recommended them. The long and short of it is, they were very accomodating people," Healey told me.

"Our experience -- we've been in the apartment business 40 years -- every six or seven years you refinance. We used to finance with Fannie Mae and some of the major banks. We've found Investors is very aggressive, and competitive rate-wise. Tim Touhey is very flexible. He gets to the credit department, they okay it. He's the account officer. He did it all. It gives you a friendly feeling when you get that type of image."

Healey mentions he also used to bank with William Rohrer's First Peoples Bank, whose over-generous loans to politicians led to his removal in the early 1980s. "We've never had a default in 40 years in the apartment business," Healey told me. "We're very conservative people. My daughter, Christine, runs the apartment division."

How'd the Healeys end up in gas? "We were in the Appalachian Basin for 27 years. We acquired a lot of leases in the Marcellus and Utica Shales. Two years ago when the deep drilling came in, Marcellus at 7,500 feet, Utica at 10,000 people, parallel wells, the big guys came in."  And Viking cashed out. We'll see how they do with real estate and Investors' capital.

Investors has also laid out $2.3 million for a client to finance Hunter's Run Apartments, Norristown, and $10.6 milllion for two apartment complexes in Lebanon, Pa. Those markets are served by Investors lender George Campbell from the bank's Spring Lake, N.J. office.

Touhey's switch from the builders' association to the bank looks like an unusual career change. But he notes he worked from for Fannie Mae from 1989-2007, and five years at the NJ Mortgage Finance Agency, and "got to know all the bankers" and builders in the state. He chaired the state Planning Commission under ex-Gov. Michael McGreevey and co-chaired Council on Affordable Housing under ex-Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.

"We've grown as a bank and we're now a regional player in the Northeast," Touhey told me. $6 billion of the company's $16 billion in assets is in commercial real estate. Investors plans to raise more than $1.6 billion "for our growth engine," in the last round of scrapping its old mutual (depositor-owned) status and becoming a shareholder-owned company. Insiders, depositors, company pension plans have dibs on the new shares.

Lend to whom? "I'm beginning to see a construction pipeline," Touhey told me. "I'm beginning to get a sense that the construction sector is on the rise."