Brian Vance
Analyst · Jackie Chimera with KBW. Please go ahead
Certainly, Jackie, and that’s an important question. And you touched on part of the CRE growth being a regulatory issue. Certainly, we stand at a - I think our investor-owned real estate, I’m recalling from memory here, but I think it’s around 220% range, so well under 300%. Let me just take that without maybe trying to pin down an exact number. So from that point of view, we are still, we are certainly well within guidance from a CRE perspective. As you can see on our balance sheet, a lot of our growth is coming from the real estate side, whether it would be owner-occupied or non-owner-occupied, most of the demand in the marketplace is real estate based. And I think that while we’re comfortable with the overall CRE exposure, when you look at it by buckets, if you will, or by category type, there are certain loan types that are experiencing some very high demand and growth, for instance, multifamily. And so as we take a look - when we talk about CRE concentration it’s not just the overall level, it really needs to get to product line. And so, when we start looking at product line, we really feel it is prudent to not only have an overall concentration, but to make sure we don’t have concentrations in individual product lines. And then, as a result, that causes us to get the - tap the breaks, maybe even place moratoriums on certain buckets, which does affect loan growth. Now, while I feel that, I’m always quick to point out that the Puget Sound region is a very strong growth area. We are seeing improvements in growth rates and valuations. But I also think that - I think bankers need to be prudent that that growth rate is also not going to continually remain linear. And at some point it’s going to soften, so I think that - I think we had a pretty long history of managing our concentrations well. And we will continue to do so going forward.