A Bank Wrote $102M on 1.9M SF of Warehouses on Hike Day

CIBC's nonrecourse refi of SkyREM's Southeast portfolio prices leased industrial at about $54 of debt per foot with a three-year fuse.

Key Highlights

• SkyREM secured $101.8M from CIBC to refinance a four-building, 1.9M-sf industrial portfolio in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina; nonrecourse, initial three-year term with two one-year extensions. JLL Capital Markets (Rotchford, Binswanger, Borges) arranged it. Announced Sept 16.
• The portfolio is 100% occupied by six tenants across warehousing, manufacturing, and e-commerce uses. Implied debt of roughly $54 per sf (our arithmetic); valuation and LTV undisclosed.
• Precedent: in early 2025, Apollo affiliates provided SkyREM a $170M refinancing on a 10-building, 2.5M-sf portfolio, also via JLL — about $68 per sf.
• SkyREM owns about 30 properties and counts Lockheed Martin, FedEx, Amazon, and Shein among major tenants; its most recent buy was a 325,334-sf manufacturing facility in Casa Grande, Ariz.
• Timing: the loan was announced the afternoon of the FOMC hike, with the ten-year at 5%.

The Signal

• Bank balance sheets are still open for fully leased industrial at conservative debt per foot.
• A three-plus-one-plus-one structure is a bet that 2029 is a better refinance year than 2026.
• The same sponsor went from private credit to a bank in 18 months — that is a pricing signal.

On the day the Fed hiked, a Canadian bank closed nonrecourse industrial debt on a Southeast portfolio. That is the part of the market that has not changed: 100% leased, multi-tenant, e-commerce and manufacturing credit, and debt at roughly $54 a foot on buildings that likely cost far more to replace.

The structure is the read. Three years with two one-year options is short for a bank refi. It says the borrower expects a better window before 2031 and the lender wants a re-look before then — both sides hedging the rate path the dot plot just laid out.

SkyREM's 2025 refi came from Apollo. Eighteen months later the same sponsor is with CIBC. Private credit priced the risk when banks were retreating; banks are back for the clean collateral, and the sponsor rotated to the cheaper source.

Debt per foot is the underwriting anchor when values are opaque. At $54 a foot on leased Southeast product, the lender has room even if cap rates widen with the ten-year.

The tenant roster — defense, parcel, e-commerce, fast fashion — is the diversification a bank wants when it cannot underwrite the rate environment.

Implications

Industrial owners with fully leased, multi-tenant portfolios can still access bank debt at conservative proceeds; the trade-off is term. Owners who need longer money will pay private credit for it. Buyers should expect industrial pricing to hold better than office or multifamily through the hike cycle because the debt is available — but underwrite the 2029 refinance, not the 2026 coupon.