I've spent 62 years in the real estate lending business. My first job when I got out of the Marine Corps in 1961 was as an FHA loan processor, and I've stayed in the business ever since. For decades, I was involved in the organization of two mortgage lenders, Aspen Savings and Loan (Aspen Co.) and Colorado Federal Savings Bank, and served as CEO of both. Over the past 15 years, I've been focusing on consulting activity for both lenders and borrowers. For the former, I've helped community banks tap into their unexploited opportunity to make mortgage loans to existing customers. For the latter, I've been highly successful in using my years as a lender to represent non-consumer and commercial real estate borrowers find financing for the difficult deals.As any good commercial mortgage broker, I have a wide range of contacts: hard money lenders, mortgage bankers specializing in commercial real estate (CRE) loans and, of course, insured financial institutions, which will offer the best terms for a CRE borrower. I know the regulations that a bank must follow, understand intimately the thinking and objectives of a senior lender at a bank, and I've experienced the often complex loan committee review process of a regulated lender. Which means that I'm successful at finding bank financing for a deal that may have been relegated to hard money.These lending resources are exactly right for CRE investors as interest rates have re-adjusted to, unfortunately for borrowers, more historically normal levels.Also, on any commercial real estate loan that’s referred to me, I pay one quarter of one percent of the fee that I'm paid at funding to whomever refers that loan.
