Transcript

Hello.  I’m Jeff Hanson, the Chief Banking Officer at Southwest Georgia Bank here at Valdosta, Georgia, to talk a little bit about the commercial lending market as a whole; maybe commercial real estate, in particular.  We have really seen a good bit of activity lately in the commercial sector.  You know, you hear a lot about banks maybe are not lending as much as they are but, you know, locally we’re starting to see a little bit more activity, a lot of pent-up demand within our commercial clients.  People have to restock inventories or are looking to expand.  We’ve got some pretty good size projects that are ongoing, expansion opportunities.  I know we work with several companies that are making quite an investment here in our community.  You look around town and you do see quite a few new projects, new finance in science ongoing, and that sort of thing.  

So I think, you know, while the real estate market and lending market as a whole is not near what it was back on ’08, ’09, 2010, we are starting to see some signs that things are improving.  We’re in an extremely low interest rate environment.  Who knows how long that’ll be.  It looks like they’ll be low for, you know, a little bit longer if you read the Fed reports.  But I think now is a great opportunity with the real estate values where they are, rates where they are, to really look at that and maybe talk to your banker about some opportunities if you’ve got expansion needs.  It’s a great time to do so.  

So anything we can do to help you we’d love to at Southwest Georgia Bank.  Just give us a call at 244-4444.