And part of that’s driven just there’s less competition out there, and it’s more scarce dollars and we want to stay close to our clients. We’re not looking to gouge but it’s a limited resource, and we’re going to charge for it.David Bishop Got it. Appreciate the color. And then, Jefferson, just curious, mortgage banking, obviously, has been trending down here. Just curious, any early read on how the spring summer selling season housing markets looking down there across our southeast markets, if you expect a rebound people got used to mortgage rates totaling in this range?Jefferson Harralson Like a start with it or just maybe give it right to Rich, if you like.Rich Bradshaw So obviously, first quarter is seasonally down in mortgage, and we’re already seeing a pickup in here already in the start of the second quarter.
So we are still in the best markets in the country. You still have 1,000 people moving to Florida a day. So we expect that mortgage isn’t going to be where it was, certainly, what 88% purchased now. So the refi business is behind us. But we’re going to be very similar picking up in the new markets because we’ve — Huntsville has really gone well on the mortgage side. And we expect that Miami will go as well as too. And so pick up a little bit, a little bit higher than Q1 pace. And we think we’ll finish the year at a decent clip.Jefferson Harralson And I’ll just add in there. We’re returning to a more normal seasonality, which is positive, but I also wanted to point that there was a pretty good change this quarter towards fixed-rate product, which goes right to the secondary market.
And so that is a bigger piece for the near-term fee income that you see in the near-term profitability that mix change is a good sign there.Operator The next question will come from Russell Gunther with Stephens. Please go ahead.Russell Gunther I wanted to follow up on the commercial lender lift-out commentary. You guys just characterize that strategy for me? Is that an evergreen approach at United? Or are you guys seeing more opportunities as perhaps some competition tighten up on a willingness to lend? And maybe any color in terms of asset size of where folks may be coming from if they see potentially a bigger, more liquid balance sheet as a competitive advantage at United?Rich Bradshaw Sure. And for us, it is opportunistic. We don’t have this building our budget.
So it’s when the opportunity arises and they have the right people, the right market for us, and they have the portfolio that we think that can be brought over, then we’re going to do it. They are generally banks of similar size or larger. And recently, it’s been primarily on the larger size, but we just continue. And yes, I’ll give you quotes. I won’t tell you what banks but part of the reason we’re getting these looks is some of these banks are telling their commercial lenders, they’re going to be deposit gatherers in 2023. Well, we need our people to do deposits, too, but we’re still open for loans. And so that’s what’s driving a lot of the interest.Russell Gunther I appreciate the color. It’s really helpful. Jefferson, I had a question for you in terms of just a reminder on securities cash flow the year.
And then how do you guys think about a target cash to assets and how that bogey may or may not have changed intra-quarter?Jefferson Harralson That’s a good question. So we’re expecting about $750 million, a little bit more in total cash flow principal and interest from the securities portfolio this year. And I mentioned the securities sale we did. We think we have loan growth mostly funded for the whole year. The cash piece is, we are holding more cash than we did just as we’ve gotten to be a bigger bank. Post Silicon Valley, we held some more cash and help some more cash on the balance sheet for a while for the last two weeks of March. And now we’re moving back down towards more normal holdings of overnight cash. So we’re in the $200 million to $300 million of what we hold overnight now with the Fed, and that is we’re back basically to a normal level post Silicon Valley.Russell Gunther Got it.
Okay. Great. Thank you. And then last one for me. I appreciate the slide on office exposure. Any additional color you could share in terms of LTV or the reserve on that portfolio?Rob Edwards So we don’t break it out specifically. So it’s really just the investment CRE book. It’s about a 1% reserve on the entire CRE book so consistent with really the rest of the portfolio. It’s the weighted average LTV is 63%. So pretty low LTV. And of course, I think the granularity as mentioned a couple of times in the slides, just a really granular portfolio. Maybe one other point I guess I would make; I did do a scrub of the top 100 and 33 of them are medical office. And of course, that’s in that second bullet on that Slide 23, but probably about third of it is medical office buildings.Operator The next question will come from Christopher Marinac with Janney Montgomery Scott.
Please go ahead.Christopher Marinac We appreciate all the information you’ve given this morning and also in the deck. I wanted to follow back up on the last question on office CRE. So given the granularity, Rob, what does that mean as problems happen, even if there are a few during the cycle, does that lower size level give you flexibility on ultimately how you dispose the properties and the loss you take? Can you just kind of walk us through the mechanics?Rob Edwards Yes. Maybe I guess I could talk about one situation we had in the fourth quarter. We did have a small office property I think it was a $2 million — slightly over $2 million valued property. We had a $1.4 million loan on it. The tenant, they had some occupancy. It went into non-accrual.
We took it to foreclosure. The property didn’t end up coming into OREO because there were other interested parties because at the lower dollar value, there’s lots of people that can afford to get into the space, local parties interested, understand the value. So it does, it just gives you more flexibility. We ended up selling it on the courthouse steps, so we never did come into OREO, and we ended up recovering.We had taken a loss originally, but we ended up recovering, I think, 90% of the loss. So the final charge-off on the whole project is I think it was less than $100,000. So it gives you lots of flexibility that the fact that you’ve got lower dollar size properties, there’s a lot more buyers in the market and local buyers that understand the value.
So the disposal process is faster and less painful.Christopher Marinac Great for that and I appreciate that. And Jefferson, just a final question for you on expenses. We look at Slide 16, you got a recent history of the operating expense ratio but I know if we went backwards in time, that number was a lot higher as the company was smaller and less successful than today.So as you think about ’24, ’25 in the big picture, what’s the ability to push operating expenses down further just as a percentage of revenue? And can you possibly get closer to that 50 threshold over the long-term?Jefferson Harralson I mean that is certainly our goal, and we set up our budgeting process and our plans every year to move that ratio down and our budgets will always have more revenue than expense growth.
If we can possibly get there. This is an unusual year with the margin, the margin moving in the on direction will contemporarily move it higher, but we’ll always be pushing to move it lower. And we believe in all of our targets are to be a top quartile ROA Bank. We think about this all the time. And to be a top quartile ROA Bank you have via top quartile efficiency ratio bank. So we think about that ratio, we manage by that ratio. We push that ratio. And we do think about it relative to other banks, so we don’t have an actual number in mind there, but we’re always trying to push it down, and we are pretty sales about being in the top quartile of that ratio.Christopher Marinac And as you’re getting very good at doing acquisitions of the size that you’re doing, does that give you a sharper pencil on sort of looking at M&A in the future?Lynn Harton Yes, it does.
