Centerline Capital Group, a national leader in mortgage financing for multifamily properties, just opened its Boston office last year. It’s a small office so far, but Hayley Suminski, who has been with the company for eight months, said the goal is to expand in the New England market and cover national accounts on the institutional side.
Suminski recently sat down with Banker & Tradesman to talk about how she got to Centerline, her work on mezzanine financing before the recession dried those funds up, and her experiences with some other ladies of New England real estate.
Hayley Suminski
Title: Vice President; Centerline Capital Group; Boston
Age: 32
Experience: 11 years
Q: Can you tell our readers a bit about your professional background?
A: I haven’t been a mortgage banker forever. Right out of college I was fortunate to land a job in acquisitions for a company here in Boston, Berkshire Property Advisors. We were building up the portfolio and acquiring multifamily portfolios across the country. Then I made the move to the lending side because I saw a good opportunity to advance my career. I did mezzanine and participating debt lending for a subsidiary of Bank of America for a while. Then I made the shift to the agency world … with licenses to lend on behalf of the government sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And now I’m back at the front end of the business looking to produce and originate loans.
Q: It must have been pretty wild to do mezzanine lending during the recession. How did your work change?
A: The company I was working for at the time was lending lots and lots of mezzanine money and then everything came to a complete halt in the fall of 2008. Then I became more of an asset manager because of the nature of the environment at the time. We were charged with maintaining the portfolio and not losing assets because there was no more money to be lent. The deals were showing a lot of signs of stress because we had lent the riskier money. But my career was positively impacted by the downturn because … I got excellent experience in working out a lot of those deals by restructuring them. I worked with clients in conversations that were challenging and very contentious, but arrived at solutions that would protect the bank’s assets as much as possible and also be something the client could reasonably work with and hopefully repay someday. It was a time where I really learned the details of some of the deals I had worked on, seeing things that could happen that we had never anticipated happening. The only way to survive it was to be as positive as possible and appreciate the experience I was getting in working out deals. But I ultimately made the decision that eventually, I would work myself out of a job because I had a certain size portfolio and we weren’t lending anymore. So I took a job in asset management managing a $6.5 billion portfolio of Fannie and Freddie loans. That was one piece of experience I hadn’t gained yet.
Q: You’re also involved with the New England Women in Real Estate (NEWiRE) networking group and in a sort of mentor/mentee relationship with Joan Parsons, a senior partner with Riemer & Braunstein. Can you talk about your experience with that organization?
A: I met Joan at a dinner through one of the companies I formerly worked for. She strongly encouraged me to become more involved with the group and join a committee. I had already joined NEWiRE but wasn’t deeply involved. She told me all about her experiences on the membership committee. She said they organized events and planned a lot of parties, and I thought that sounded like a lot of fun. So I joined the membership committee, and like everyone said, that’s how you really got to know other members on a deeper level. When I joined the real estate world I realized very quickly that it was very male-dominated, and that was fine. But I often would be the only woman in the room at meetings. And NEWiRE helped me connect with successful women in the business and I’ve formed a good network and friendships out of it.
Suminski’s Five Favorite Beaches, With Summer Just Around The Corner:
- Plum Island – Mass.
- Sandy Beach – Rincon, Puerto Rico
- Narragansett Beach – Rhode Island
- Bophut Bay – Koh Samui, Thailand
- Pacific Beach – San Diego, Calif.
