Federal Regulators approve Bank Plans for Real Estate Developments
A fight may be a brewin’ over the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s recent decision to allow Bank of America and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. to move forward with their real estate development projects. One group upset with recent events is the National Association of Realtors.
The Realtor trade group plans to file a Freedom of Information Act request “to determine whether the OCC has quietly authorized other banks to engage in real estate activities that may violate the letter or spirit of (the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), as well as the National Bank Act, and bring banks one step closer to engaging in commercial real estate brokerage.â€?
Realtors have been lobbying aggressively for several years to block Congress from allowing federally chartered financial institutions from engaging in real estate brokerage services. At the same time, supporters of federal banks’ entry into real estate have argued that several real estate brokerage companies already offer financial services related to real estate transactions
In a recently-released announcement by the National Association of Realtors, they worry that such projects could bring banks “closer to controlling commercial real estate projects from top to bottom.â€?
It is reported that PNC will invest $122 million in a complex near its headquarters that will include a 30-story building for offices, a 150-room hotel and 32 condominiums. PNC employees are projected to occupy 22 percent of the new office and hotel space. Bank of America plans to develop and own a 150-room, 15-story Ritz-Carlton hotel as part of its headquarters complex in Charlotte, N.C. It plans to use more than 37.5 percent of the rooms on an annual basis