Stephanie Maiona
Title: First Vice President/Commercial Lender, Needham Bank
Experience: 20 years, including nearly three at Needham Bank
Stephanie Maiona has more than 20 years of experience in commercial banking and lending, much of it with big clients, working on big projects at large banks.
Two and a half years ago, she joined Needham Bank, where she has focused her expertise on helping single-family builders and developers of small condo projects get the financing they need for their projects.
The financing and projects are on a smaller scale, but Maiona said she enjoys getting to know clients individually. And construction financing, she pointed out, is construction-financing, no matter the scale.
“Construction is hard wherever you do it, and stressful,” she remarked. “Even if you’re not going at warp speed, there’s still way too much to do every day. And there’s always something you want to be doing that you didn’t get to.”
Q: What kind of builders do you work with?
A: The bread and butter of the bank is builders who will do up to five spec single-family houses at a time. Some of them will only do a couple at a time. Some will have five going at once. Some are pre-sold. Generally, they buy a lot of land in Needham or Wellesley, knock the house down, and put up the [new] Needham house or Wellesley house. Our market is Needham, Wellesley, Weston, Dedham and Medfield for single-family spec. We’re predominantly a construction bank. If anything walks in the door with any kind of a construction component, we’re all over it. We love that. Construction, renovation, repositioning …
Q: What’s the largest project you’ve worked on at Needham Bank?
A: We are the lender on Wingate at Needham, a $24 million, 90-bed assisted living facility in Needham. We’ve done Avita of Needham, that’s a 70-bed assisted living facility. We’ll do those types of projects.
Q: You’re also involved in condo construction?
A: What we really like is condo development in certain Boston markets and also in Cambridge and Somerville. We’ll do brand new construction of condos, or somebody who takes a three-family in Dorchester, renovates it and sells off the three units. We also love the rental market in South Boston. We have a pretty big presence there. Again, it’s got to be something that has some kind of construction or renovation component. … We’ve done really well in South Boston. Some of them are as small as three condo conversions. Same thing in Dorchester. Somerville, a little bit bigger. We like that market a lot. We think it has good project economics, demographics. And at the right price point, things sell quickly. Cambridge has always been hot that way.
Q: Why would a builder in South Boston go to Needham Bank instead of a bank in Boston?
A: We’ve always been very flush. We’ve never shut down. And we’ve never said no to viable construction or condo deals. So, a couple of years ago when we got introduced to a couple of builders there, we were very happy to lend there. We were very comfortable with the market and we certainly had the funds to lend. Prior to that, maybe the bank that they were with may have shut off its construction or maybe just walked away from condos for awhile. We’ve never done that. And just word of mouth.
Q: What are some of the ways you help condo builders with their projects?
A: One thing we do here that helps us and helps our customers who are involved in condo construction and development is we provide end-user loans. And we reserve the right to sell into the secondary market, but we hold them all in portfolio. If someone has a three-unit condo deal in Dorchester, we could provide the end financing to a qualified borrower, and we provide a very nice rate on that to encourage our builders to sell their products so that they can then build again.
Q: How would you describe the condo and single-family construction market right now?
A: I don’t think the profit margins are there for builders the way they were a few years ago … That has caused some slowness. We’ve been very lucky. Needham and Wellesley have had some good market conditions. But there’s still supply and demand issues … We’re always looking for good new business. We’ve been 100 percent supportive of our clients. … We would love to see higher production. We’re a bunch of deal junkies.
Q: What are you doing to help single-family home builders?
A: We have a security committee that meets every single day that approves [construction] draws. We go out every single day and look at projects. We are fast. Our approval process is pretty streamlined, I think. Our credit committee meets twice a week. … Our builder-to-buyer program is great. A lot of our builders like that … And then, just keeping the construction draws running helps them get their project out to market faster. They’re not waiting to be funded for a week, which means they’re paying their [subcontractors] every week.
