Amtrak To Move Headquarters Back To Union Station Amid Federal Takeover
September 22, 2025
State of the District: Sports, affordable housing among mayor’s priorities in speech to business leaders
September 23, 2025
Kennedy Wilson is one of many commercial real estate lenders that sees a strong investment thesis in new multifamily construction in the D.C. region — a market that has achieved steady rent growth and experienced a sharp drop in new supply.
But being bullish on multifamily projects in the D.C. area today means jumping headfirst into the most active segment of development: office-to-residential conversions. As momentum builds behind these projects, the market for financing them has become extremely competitive.
“We’re aggressively pursuing all of the deals that we like, and because of the abatement and other factors, a lot of those deals are conversions,” Kennedy Wilson Managing Director Craig Lockard, who is based in D.C. and works on loan originations across the eastern half of the U.S., told Bisnow.
The Beverly Hills, California-based firm is financing two large conversion projects that are under construction in Alexandria. It provided an $84M loan to Carr Properties’ 237-unit project at 425 Montgomery, and it made a $96M senior construction loan for Community Three and Whitaker Investment Corp.’s 234-unit TideLock project on the waterfront.
It has tried to finance conversions in the District, but Lockard said it lost out to other lenders on two of the projects underway downtown: Duball’s 161-unit conversion at 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, which Eaglebank financed with a $54.5M loan, and National Real Estate Development’s 157-unit project at 1625 Massachusetts Ave. NW, which Bank of America financed with a $62.8M loan.
“We competed very hard to win that deal and lost it,” he said of the 1625 Mass project.
“So, yeah, it’s competitive,” he added. “Those two projects were great because they had three sides of really good light and air, and the floor plates and the ceiling heights all were very functional for a conversion.”
Meanwhile, the firm is looking at two more conversion projects in Alexandria and Arlington.
It’s not that the firm is especially interested in conversions. In fact, Lockard said Kennedy Wilson is more selective on those opportunities, given the particular challenges that come with turning an old building into a new use.
