Arbor Plants a Tree, Symbolizing Our Strength, to Mark Three Anniversaries
Forty years ago, Ivan Kaufman, a first-year law student at Hofstra, planted the roots of what would become Arbor Realty Trust. To commemorate the company’s founding and growth, a group of employees planted an Eastern Red Cedar tree, a symbol of strength and resilience, at Tanglewood Preserve in Rockville Centre, NY, this week.
Arbor, founded in 1983, has long had a tradition of commemorating closed loans by planting a tree. “We grew up in a household. It was not just entrepreneurial. It was also very philanthropic,” said Kaufman in 2020 on the Inside the Ice House podcast. “And those are the footsteps that I followed in.”
A Purpose-Driven Company
At 23, Kaufman started American Mortgage Banking. The company’s name “didn’t mean that much other than when you pulled up the charts, your name under A came up first,” he said. “We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to rename that company, how to have a purpose, how to have a community purpose, which is pretty much the way I was brought up. So, I did a contest with our employees, and we basically came up with the name Arbor.”
This community purpose is one of our differentiators.
“What people don’t realize back in 1985, 1986, 1987, we were still using Styrofoam cups and all those environmentally unsound things,” said Kaufman. “So, we created the name Arbor, and it was all about the environment. And here it is where, providing financing for individual homes, were community-oriented and allowed us to really have a community name.”
Over the years, Arbor has derived strength from altruism. Just the like the cedar tree our employees planted this week, Arbor is positioned to grow to new heights as we celebrate three significant company milestones.
Celebrating Three Major Arbor Milestones
1983
Arbor National Mortgage (a residential mortgage company) was founded by Ivan Kaufman. It goes public under the name Arbor National Holdings in 1992 with an IPO price of $9.00.
1993
Arbor Commercial Mortgage (ACM) was established as the commercial real estate finance subsidiary of Arbor National Holdings. It was later sold to Bank of America in 1995 for $17.50 per share, nearly 100% ROI for investors.
2003
ACM’s structured business spins off into Arbor Realty Trust (ART) through a $120M 144A offering.
“Our performance continues to be head and shoulders above everyone in our peer group, none of which have been able to increase their dividend at all in the last few years,” said Kaufman on Arbor’s Q1 2023 Earnings Call. “With our best-in-class asset-management capabilities and a seasoned executive team, we are very confident that when the smoke clears, we will continue to be the top-performing company in our space, significantly outperforming our peers.”
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