So I think there will be think a tale of 2 cities. There will be a normalized market for better sponsors and better assets like we have, which I think have largely retained their values, and I think for which there will be a market. And then there’s going to be properties that either have less solid sponsorship or capital stacks that are far too overleveraged or a sponsorship that doesn’t have the liquidity and capacity to muscle through redeveloping or monetizing or retenanting their buildings. And those properties will fall into an opportunistic bucket that in the second half of this year, I would think you might see us start to poke our heads up again. I did mention that in December that we definitely have our own capital resources. We have access to third-party capital resources that could make us acquisitive or reentering the investment market opportunistically, probably in the second half of this year.
And there will be some opportunities. But for all that people anticipate in terms of what kind of distress there might be in the market or otherwise like that, it rarely evidences itself these days in New York City specifically in Manhattan because again, you’ve got like the top 10 or 12 owners controlling 50% or 55% of the inventory in the market. And these companies tend to be best liquid and capable of weathering through this market. Already we’re starting to see the rate rise moderate. We’ve seen the long end actually come in quite a bit over 50 basis points from its peak. I think as Andrew mentioned, when the long-term financing market comes back and it will, then you’re going to see that liquidity spigot back on and on we go. So we think this is more of a mini correction.
We don’t think this is something else that maybe some of the brokers are implying, but we’ll see how the year goes. And right now, we’re still sticking with our plan and we feel we can execute it.
Operator: Our next question or comment comes from the line of Derek Johnston from Deutsche Bank.
Derek Johnston: As the DPE balance decreases and loans mature or repaid, I think this quarter was $57 million, how do you plan to put that capital to work? Can you just remind us, are there any restrictions how that — how those repayments or capital can be deployed? And then just an update on the DPE strategy. I think we have the ’23 strategy for the near term. But what are the thoughts for the midterm?
Matthew DiLiberto: So as it relates to use of capital upon repayment, we have no restrictions.
Andrew Mathias: $7 million was a loan.
Matthew DiLiberto: Right. That was the $57 million was repaid. We anticipated the repayment to come Three, it came in late in ’22, and we simply paid down debt with it, which is what we’ve been doing along with here purchases with a lot of the repayments and sales proceeds that we’ve gotten off the DPE book for the list couple of years, but we don’t have any specific restrictions as to how we use those proceeds.
Andrew Mathias: We don’t treat the DPE book as sort of a closed system where money has to get redeployed into DPE. Those dollars are fungible and can go towards debt repayment or investment in assets or investment into new assets. We look at — evaluate all the investment opportunities across all our business lines, try to figure out where the best risk reward is, and we’ll allocate dollars there.
Derek Johnston: Okay. Got it. And then maybe a fun one, if you would. What gives you guys confidence that the casino license that your Times Square project is superior and what kind of stands — makes it stand out versus the others and now even a potential PenDistrict application being submitted?
