ORGANIZATION AND BUSINESS OPERATIONS

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2019

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]

ORGANIZATION AND BUSINESS OPERATIONS

Hunt Companies Finance Trust, Inc. (together with its consolidated subsidiaries, the “Company”), is a Maryland corporation that focuses primarily on investing in, financing and managing a portfolio of commercial real estate debt investments. Effective January 3, 2020, the Company is externally managed by OREC Investment Management, LLC (the "Manager" or "OREC IM"), who replaced the prior manager, Hunt Investment Management, LLC ("HIM"). The Company's common stock is listed on the NYSE under the symbol "HCFT."

The Company was incorporated on March 28, 2012 and commenced operations on May 16, 2012. The Company began trading as a publicly traded company on March 22, 2013.

The Company has elected to be taxed as a real estate investment trust (“REIT”) and to comply with Sections 856 through 859 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, (the "Code"). Accordingly, the Company generally will not be subject to U.S. federal income tax to the extent of its distributions to stockholders and as long as certain asset, income and share ownership tests are met.

On April 30, 2018, as more particularly described in our current Report on Form 8-K filed on April 30, 2018, the Company acquired Hunt CMT Equity LLC for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $68 million. The assets of Hunt CMT Equity LLC were comprised of commercial mortgage loans financed through a collateralized loan obligation ("Hunt CRE 2017-FL1, Ltd."), a licensed commercial mortgage lender ("Hunt CMT Finance, LLC") and eight loan participations from a Hunt affiliate. The assets of Hunt CRE 2017-FL1, Ltd. were comprised of performing floating-rate commercial mortgage loans with a portfolio balance of $339.4 million and $9.8 million in cash available for reinvestment at the acquisition date. The securitization pool was financed by investment-grade notes with a notional principal balance of $290.7 million and a net carrying value of $287.6 million after accounting for unamortized discount. Additionally, the Company paid $0.1 million for the assets acquired with the licensed lender and $6.2 million for the loan participations.

On February 14, 2019, the Company drew on its secured term loan ("Secured Term Loan") in the aggregate principal amount of $40.25 million and used the net proceeds of $39.2 million and working capital of $1.1 million to redeem all 1,610,000 shares of its outstanding 8.75% Series A Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock at its $25 per share liquidation preference plus accrued and unpaid dividends.

On March 18, 2019, the Company entered into a support agreement with HIM, pursuant to which HIM agreed to reduce the expense reimbursement cap by 25% per annum (subject to such reduction not exceeding $568,000 per annum) until such time as the aggregate support provided thereunder equaled approximately $1.96 million. The terms of the support agreement are materially unchanged in the new management agreement with the Manager.

On January 3, 2020, the Company and HIM entered into a termination agreement to which the Company and HIM agreed to mutually and immediately terminate that certain management agreement dated January 18, 2018, by and between the Company and HIM. The Company simultaneously entered into a new management agreement with OREC IM. See Note 13 for further discussion.