Commercial Loans and Fun Blog

So many borrowers are going to need a commercial loan over the next two years to refinance a balloon payment that at some point bankers and conduit commercial loan officers may refuse to accept new loan applications.  It won't be the first time in history.

We start from the general proposition that most commercial loans have a balloon payment every five, seven or ten years.  Wow.  Stop for a moment and think about that.  Just about every owner of a commercial-investment property will have to refinance his property every five to ten years.  As a commercial loan originator, I find this greatly reassuring.  It means that even during recessions there will still be some commercial loans that need to be closed, so we can earn loan fees and eat.

By the way, a commercial-investment property is a property that can be easily leased out, be turned over to a management company, and serve as a passive investment, much like a bond.  Examples of commercial-investment properties include multifamily properties, office buildings, row and free standing commercial buildings, strip centers, shopping centers, industrial buildings, and some of the nicer mobile home parks.

Many of the other types of commercial properties are more like businesses, like hotels and motels, self storage facilities, owner-occupied restaurants, and older trailer parks.  These latter properties are too management intensive to be deemed a commercial-investment property.  The guys who buy and run them are not passive investors, but rather business owners.  It is interesting to note that many owner-operated business properties qualify for SBA loans, and if they are financed using the SBA 7(a) program, they have no balloon payments.

By the way, Brazil, the English women just did MUCH better than yours in the World Cup, and they almost made it the finals.  So there!  Neener-neener-neener.

Okay, back to the subject of rationing commercial mortgage money.  In 2005, 2006, and 2007 commercial real estate lenders made a ton of commercial loans.   Ten years later those commercial loans - totaling hundreds of billions of dollars - are now coming due.

To complicate the matter, the commercial loan origination profession has shrunk by at least 50% since the heyday.  There is an actual shortage of trained conduit and bank commercial real estate loan officers.  When Busy Season starts in late August of this year, the phones are going to ring off the hook, and there will not be enough trained commercial loan officers to field all of the calls.

Now to my third point.  The best commercial real estate lenders cream the market.  It's not like residential mortgage finance, where if a deal meets a lender's minimum requirements, it gets approved.  No.  Commercial mortgage finance is more like high school.  The quarterback dates the head cheerleader.  The star running back dates the second prettiest girl, and so on.  The life companies - because they have the lowest interest rates - take the absolute most desirable commercial loans.  Typically life companies finance the huge trophy deals, like the biggest lifestyle centers or the newest, tallest, shiniest office towers in the city.

By the way, a lifestyle center is a huge shopping center where the shoppers can drive right up to the store of their choice.  Do you know why indoor malls suddenly fell out of favor?  This is probably tactless of me to say, but so many Americans are now so overweight that its hard for them to walk the length of some huge indoor mall.  At a lifestyle center, shoppers can drive right up to Target, pop in, pop out, and then drive away.

Okay, back to commercial lenders cherry-picking and how it compares to dating in high school.  After the life companies choose the largest, shiniest commercial loans, the conduits get to pick over the deals.  They typically take the more bread-and-butter commercial loans over $5 million.  The banks, S&L's (not many left), and credit unions choose a huge percentage of the rest.  Next comes the nonprime commercial lenders and finally the hard money lenders.

Now here is what is going to happen.  We are not going to be issued ration cards.  We are not going to have to stand in long bread lines.  However, as the lenders at the top of the food chain get inundated with commercial loan applications, they are going to get very, very picky.  Surprisingly strong borrowers with attractive commercial properties are going to get pushed down the food chain to lenders with less desirable rates and terms.  Put another way, an average-looking guy like me might actually get to date the 6th cutest cheerleader.  (Okay, she's probably not that desperate, but maybe I might get to date one of the cuter pom-pom girls).

Although it is not strictly rationing, the nation's cheapest commercial lenders are only going to be able to handle a limited amount of business.  Even if a lender had an unlimited amount of commercial mortgage money - like a conduit - the limiting factor is going to be a limited amount of trained staff to handle the commercial loan demand tsunami.

"Okay, George, so what's a boy or girl to do?"

1. If you are a commercial real estate investor, if you have a balloon payment coming due in the next three years, and if you don't have some horrible prepayment penalty, apply for your refinance immediately.
   
   
2. If you are a commercial mortgage broker, you better go out of your way to build a personal relationship with your bank and conduit loan officers.  Take your banker to lunch.  Invite him over for a football game and/or a barbeque.  Take him and his wife out to dinner.  Your favorite commercial s loan officer is going to get extremely busy during the tsunami.  You better be a good friend if you expect him to process one more commercial loan.  He is going to be exhausted.
   
   
3. And always remember that imaginary story I wrote about getting hit by a bus.  As I lay on the pavement bleeding out, I told my two wonderful sons, "Sons, always remember the most important lesson in all of commercial real estate finance.  Commercial lenders close loans for their friends!"

If you should meet a banker who makes commercial loans, don't forget that you can parlay the contents of that one business card into a free directory of 2,000 commercial real estate lenders.

If you have a commercial real estate loan request on a standing commercial property (sorry, but we don't make construction loans), you would be very, very wise to submit it to Blackburne & Sons.  We'll issue a Loan Approval Letter for free.  You can then use that "commitment letter" to troll for a cheaper loan from a bank.  Just like girls are attracted to boys with a pretty girl on their arm, so too are bankers attracted to commercial loans that other lenders have already approved.

Got a commercial loan larger than $2 million (or otherwise unsuitable for Blackburne & Sons)?  Remember, C-Loans.com is free!

You can now submit business loans - loans like inventory loans, equipment loans, accounts receivable financing, equipment leases, and secured lines of credit - through C-Loans.

Click on the red button immediately below and then forward the page to any bankers you know who make commercial loans.  If the banker signs up to join C-Loans as a lender, we'll give you a free training course of your choice, as well as $250 every time he closes a loan for us..

Today's training article about blanket commercial loans contains an unusually important point that we will cover at the very end.  Be sure to stick with me until then.

The article is being written on marketing software created by a company called Hubspot.  Hubspot's marketing software was one of the best investments I've ever made.  The wonderful folks at Hubspot taught me how to capture the contact information of a huge percentage of the visitors to C-Loans.com.  My personal software coach, a lovely lady named Emily, taught me, "George, you have to give to get."  That's why our site gives away wonderful products - like a free list of 2,000 commercial lenders.  "You have to give to get."

You and I probably first met when you clicked on a Call-To-Action button similar to the one shown below.

Anyway, one of the tools that Hubspot provides me is software that scans the internet every day and gives me a link to all of the news articles written nationwide about commercial loans or commercial real estate finance.  It's a great way for a rural guy to stay abreast of what all of the young hotshots are doing in New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago.

Yesterday an interesting article appeared in my CREF* news feed.  It was a tombstone released by a peer-to-peer commercial lending site announcing the close of a $6.75 million blanket commercial loan in Chicago.  *Commercial Real Estate Finance

What is a peer-to-peer lending site?  A peer-to-peer commercial lending site is one that bypasses the banking system.  By "peer" we mean the same kind of entity.  For example, if one private individual makes a loan to another private individual - some rich guy loans a young beer enthusiast $100,000 to start a brew pub - that's a peer-to-peer loan.  

Another example of a peer-to-peer loan is what happened in Chicago.  An investment fund LLC loaned this real estate development company $6.75 million to buy a class A office building in Chicago and to renovate it.  What makes this a peer-to-peer loan was that this investment fund is proably not in the business of making commercial real estate loans full-time.  This $6.75 million loan was probably just an investment for them.  Now if this investment fund was a mortgage investment fund run by a hard money lender, then this loan really wouldn't be a peer-to-peer loan.  That mortgage fund is a "professional lender", rather than a casual investor.

"Okay, George, I sort of get it.  But what's the difference between a peer-to-peer lending site and a crowdfunding site?"

A crowdfunding site is a lending site that syndicates groups of investors to make a loan.  Its not just one rich guy making the loan, but rather its a group of smaller investors pooling their money to make the loan.  This structure has the advantage of allowing an investor with just $20,000 to diversify his dough out among a dozen different loans.  A crowdfunding site is not just a source of loans.  Start-ups can also find equity investors to put up dough for a piece of the ownership.

Thought For the Day:  If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Okay, now its time to finally talk about blanket commercial loans to create a downpayment.  Do you remember that $6.75 million office building purchase in Chicago?  Well, the buyer didn't put any money down!  No, instead he pledged as additional collateral a $3 million home in New York City that he owned free-and-clear.  The peer-to-peer lending site made a blanket commercial loan against both properties - the beautiful office building in Chicago and the free-and-clear home in New York City.  Its combined loan-to-value ratio against both properties was less than 58%.  It was a great deal for the lender and a very acceptable deal for the buyer, who already had a prospective tenant for the office building signed up.  You may have noticed that I said "acceptable deal" for the buyer, rather than "great deal".  I am sure the loan was far more expensive than a bank loan.

My own private money commercial lending company, Blackburne & Sons, is making a similar blanket commercial loan to create a downpayment this month.  Our borrowerr has the chance to buy a nice 24-unit apartment building in Massachussets, but he lacks a downpayment.  He owns, however, a four-plex and a duplex free and clear.  We are therefore blanketing all three properties to make a $590,000 new blanket first mortgage to allow him to acquire the apartment building.  Our combined LTV on all three properties is 65%.  Its a good deal.

Now for the point of today's article.  You have seen how savvy commercial loan brokers get purchase money deal funded - they have their buyers put up additional collateral.

But here's the thing:  Banks seldom (almost never) make blanket commercial loans.  Wall Street lenders - like conduit lenders and nonprime commercial lenders - never make blanket commercial loans.  If you need a blanket commercial loan, you need to apply to a private money (hard money) commercial lender.

Got a buddy who makes commercial loans for a bank or a credit union?  (Deposits must be Federally-insured.)  Wanna make some dough?  Please click on the red button below and forward the page to him.  If he joins C-Loans, we'll give you a free training course of your choice, plus $250 every time he closes a loan for C-Loans.

What is the difference between a subprime commercial loan and and a nonprime commercial loan?

The expression "subprime commercial loan" was a term advanced by Bayview Financial, and its subsidiary InterBay Funding, to describe a certain quality of commercial loan made in the early 2000's (1999-2007) that was destined to be added to Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) pools and eventually securitized.  We discussed ABS pools in my last blog post, Where Does Subprime Commercial Loan Money Come From?

Subprime commercial loans were pretty good loans.  They were the commercial real estate loans that were just not quite good enough for the banks.  Their characteristics were:

1. They were first mortgage loans.
   
   
2. They were secured by standing commercial properties; i.e., subprime commercial lenders did not make constructions or renovation loans.
   
   
3. Subprime commercial lenders would accept most commercial property types, including multifamily properties, office buildings, retail buildings, strip centers and shopping centers, industrial buildings, mixed use properties, auto repair, hotels and motels, restaurants and bars, and self storage.  They would not finance churches and nudie bars.
   
   
4. Deals were qualified primarily by loan-to-value ratio and a minimum credit score.
   
   
5. Within a small range, the higher the credit score, the higher the loan-to-value ratio that subprime commercial lenders would go.
   
   
6. Most subprime commercial loans were stated asset loans; i.e., the borrower's signed financial statement was accepted at face value.  The borrower did not have to prove how much money he had in the bank.
   
   
7. Most subprime commercial loans were stated income loans; i.e., the borrower's income, as stated on a signed financial statement, was accepted at face value and did not have to be supported by  tax returns.  In fact, tax returns were rarely even collected.
   
   
8. Full occupancy was not required.
   
   
9. Lease estoppels were not obtained.  A lease estoppel is a document, signed by the tenant, confirming what he owed in rent.  By signing, the tenant was estopped (fancy legal word meaning he is stopped from denying) from claiming he had prepaid his rent or that his rent obligation was somehow lower.  (Note to self:  Estoppels would make a great blog subject.)
   
   
10. Impounds for leasing commissions and tenant improvements were not required.  This is surprisingly important because CMBS lenders require such impounds on conduit loans.

It is important for you to understand that subprime commercial loans are gone for good.  Even though these subprime commercial loans performed reasonably well during the Great Recession, subprime residential loans proved to be such a disaster that they have forever poisoned the well for subprime investors.  The word, "subprime", is now a very dirty word.

"But George, I get emails all of the time saying that 'Subprime Commercial Loans Are Back.'"  It's nonsense.  These emails are simply from hard money lenders wishing to make their commercial loans at hard money rates and terms.

The wonderful thing about the subprime commercial loans of the early 2000's was that they were offered at interest rates that were a whopping 3% to 4% cheaper than the best rate that any hard money lender could offer you.  Unfortunately those days and those loans are indeed gone forever.

"Okay, George, so what is a nonprime commercial loan?"

I have now mentioned several times that subprime commercial loans performed pretty darned well during the Great Recession.  The boys on Wall Street are not idiots.  They took notice of the surprising performance of these older subprime commercial loans during the slump, and the situation screams to bring them back.

But the Wall Street Boys have a packaging problem.  It's that dirty word, "Subprime."  Yuck!  Wash my mouth out with soap.  But what if they gave these same loans a different name?  How about "Nonprime"?

Okay, we're on the right track; but we have to make a few substantive changes - something real.  Otherwise investors will see through the charade.  One of the big criticisms of subprime residential loans was that they were liar loans.  The borrowers didn't make near the amount of money they represented on their loan applications, and not surprisingly, a ton of these loans went bad.  Okay, so we'll document these new nonprime loans better.  That will be the substantive difference.

Now we are finally ready to describe the characteristics of a nonprime commercial loan:

1. As a general rule, nonprime commercial loans are the same kind of deals as subprime commercial loans.  They are pretty good commercial loans that are just not quite good enough for a bank or a conduit.
   
   
2. Stated income loans are a thing of the past.  Tax returns and leases are required.
   
   
3. Most commercial real estate loans loans are arguably stated asset loans.  Surprisingly, even though commercial real estate loans are usually much, much larger than home loans, most banks and most other commercial lenders do not require the borrower to verify his bank deposits and stock holdings.*  This is also true of these new nonprime loans.  *No verifications of deposit are required for $2 million commercial loans, but if the borrower wants to borrow just $100,000 to buy a home, he has to verify every piece of lint in his belly button.  Ha-ha!  Weird but true.
   
   
4.  Because of all of the documentation requirements, most nonprime commercial lenders only want to do larger loans - the deals over $750,000.  In the old days, InterBay Funding would do subprime commercial loans as small as $100,000.
   
   
5. Because the loan amounts are still much smaller than conduit loans (minimum of $5 million), I do not believe that impounds are required for leasing commissions and tenant improvements.  (Anybody out there know for sure?)

For more on subprime and nonprime commercial loans, please click here.

Six new nonprime commercial lenders have joined C-Loans in the past 18 months.  You can submit your four-minute mini-app to all six of them with one click.  And remember, your use of C-Loans is free!

If you appreciate my simple way of teaching, I would ask you to do one thing for me and one thing for yourself.  When you guys share my blog articles on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it means the world to me.  Thank you.

And for yourself, invest a lousy $549 in your professional education and order my famous 9-hour video training course, How To Broker Commercial Loans.  It teaches you how to market for commercial loans, how to underwrite them, how to package them, where to place them, and most importantly, how to collect your fee (fee agreement included).

Remember, if you run across a banker who makes commercial real estate loans, be sure to grab his business card.  You can parlay the contents of this business card into a free directory of over 2,000 commercial real estate lenders.

So you meet a banker who makes commercial real estate loans.  "Hey, Mr. Banker, do you want to make a few more commercial real estate loans?  You do?  I have just the contact for you."  Then you forward him the web page that appears if you hit the red button below.  If he joins C-Loans, you'll get a free training course of your choice, plus $250 every time he closes a commercial loan for us.

 I had a lender this month "delay" in paying me a $31,500 closing fee.  Because I have completed more fee collection actions than anyone in the industry, I was able to encourage him to pay me in full without any bloodshed.  Guys and ladies, you need to learn this!  This fee agreement and fee collection course are included in the complete nine-hour course described above, but if you can't afford $549, you can buy just the fee collection portion of the course for $199.

My private money commercial mortgage company is starving for small commercial permanent loans.  Remember, we'll issue you a Loan Approval Letter with 24 to 48 hours for free.  You can then show this Loan Approval Letter to your bankers.  Just like girls are attracted to boys with a pretty girl on their arm, bankers are attracted to (porch lights and) commercial loans that other lenders have already approved.

For over thirty years, the only commercial real estate lenders making subprime commercial loans were hard money commercial lenders.  Either a bank funded your commercial real estate loan or a hard money lender funded it.  No one else was making subprime commercial loans.

Then some smart Wall Street investment bankers started to covet the outrageous returns being enjoyed by those private investors who invested in hard money commercial loans.  There is an old saying in capitalism, "Outrageous profits breeds competition."  Many private investors who invested in subprime commercial loans - even after loan lossess - were indeed earning outrageous yields, typically 6% to 8% more than what C.D.'s were yielding.

The first major Wall Street player into the subprime commercial loan business was Bayview Financial L.P., along with their small commercial loan subsidiary, InterBay Funding, LLC.  Bayview and InterBay entered the subprime commercial loan market in 1999.  By the end of 2006, they were the dominant players in the business of securitizing subprime commercial real estate loans.  Another large player in the subprime commercial loan business at the time, although considerably smaller, was Lehman Brothers.

At the time, the securitization business was going wild.  Investment bankers were already securitizing jumbo home loans, car loans, and credit card debt.  It was Bayview Financial that first convinced the investment world to also accept subprime commercial loans into their loan pools.

Bayview Financial accomplished this important feat by gradually sprinkling a few subprime commercial loans into their asset-backed securization pools.  You have no doubt heard of the term mortgage-backed securities; but asset-backed securities are slightly different than mortgage-backed securities.

Asset-backed securities ("ABS's") are defined as bonds backed by pools of various kinds of loans, not just mortgages.  In the early 2000's, the typical asset-backed securitization pool consisted of credit card paper, car loans, aircraft leases, royalty payments, and scratch-and-dent residential loans, which are home loans that have been kicked out of mortgage pools.

Bayview Financial convinced some Wall Street investment bankers to allow them to sprinkle into these asset-backed securitization pools a few subprime commercial loans.  This had several advantages for the pool.  First of all, the typical scratch-and-dent residential loan was 80% loan-to-value.  The typical subprime commercial loan was just 65% loan-to-value.  By sprinkling in a few subprime commercial loans, the pool's average loan-to-value ratio declined from 80% to 72% LTV or so.

The average yield on a subprime commercial loan was also around 2.5% higher than the average scratch-and-dent residential loan.   Sprinkling in a few subprime commercial loans raised the average mortgage yield in the pool.

The concept proved to be a sound one.  These subprime commercial loans also ended up having a better payment record than the residential loans in the ABS pools. Soon Wall Street had a steady appetite for subprime commercial loans, and Bayview had created a new industry.  For several years the ABS industry was cookin' with gas.

Then the Great Recession hit.  Subprime residential loans defaulted in enormous numbers, and soon the word "subprime" became a dirty word.  The ABS market dried up entirely, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and Bayview Financial was forced out of the market.  The entire Wall Street subprime commercial loan industry disappeared overnight.

For eight years a handful of surviving hard money commercial lenders feasted on a niche where we had very little competition.  It was a particularly good time because the banks had largely stopped making commercial loans.  Therefore not only was the Wall Street subprime commercial loan business gone, but the banks were not making many commercial real estate loans either.  Those were the days, my friend.

In my last blog article, I mentioned that while commercial real estate fell by 45% during the Great Recession, it did NOT fall because so many subprime commercial loans went bad.  In fact, the overwhelming majority of these Wall Street subprime commercial loans paid a fine rate of interest through the Great Recession.

By the way, I call them "Wall Street" subprime commercial loans because it is the investment banking industry that sells the bonds backed by these subprime commercial loans.  Bayview, InterBay, Lehman Brothers, and other mortgage companies may have originated these loans, but it is the Wall Street investment bankers who ultimately sell these asset-backed bonds.

Okay, so the economy eventually recovered.  The surprisingly positive performance of these subprime commercial loans through the slump was noticed by the investment world.  Capitalism functions, and now the Wall Street subprime commercial lenders are back.

But there is a twist.  No longer do bond investors just want a few subprime commercial loans sprinkled on top.  Now they want the entire ice cream cone filled with subprime commercial loans.  In other words, the entire pool of loans will be subprime commercial loans.  These pools will be securitized as if they were they were small, higher-yielding CMBS pools.

These new commercial loans are called nonprime commercial loans.  I hope to blog later this week about the difference between a subprime commercial loan and a nonprime commercial loan.

For more on subprime and nonprime commercial loans, please click here.

At least six nonprime commercial loan companies have sprung up or returned to the market in the past 18 months.  Blessedly they have all joined C-Loans.com as lenders.  You can apply to all six nonprime commercial lenders by submitting your deal through C-Loans.

Remember, if you run across a banker who makes commercial real estate loans, be sure to grab one of his business cards.  You can parlay the contents of just one business card into a free directory of over 2,000 commercial real estate lenders.

How would you like to get that wonderful 9-hour video course for free?  Just convince one of your banker buddies to join C-Loans.com as a lender.  You'll also receive $250 every time he closes a commercial loan for C-Loans.  Is it hard to convince a banker to join?  Naw.  Just click on the red button below and forward the page to your banker.  The page sells itself.

C-Loans now offers business loans, rather than just commercial real estate loans.  This includes accounts receivable financing, equipment financing, inventory financing, and secured lines of credit.

My own hard money shop is ravenous for subprime commercial loans.

Commercial loans were soooo easy to find after the Great Recession.  It was like shooting ducks in a barrel.  Banks had stopped making commercial real estate loans, and many were even offering their existing borrowers a huge discount to pay their commercial loans off early.  These were called discounted pay-offs (DPO's), and my private money commercial mortgage company, Blackburne & Sons, must have financed sixty DPO's in the last three years.  Man, do I ever miss those days.

But like a forest mending itself after a fire, the commercial mortgage market is returning to health.  A-quality commercial mortgage requests are once again getting financed by banks, rather than by private money (hard money) lenders.

Wall Street subprime lenders have even returned to the market.  Most have joined C-Loans.com, and you can find them by inputting your commercial loans - not into one of our gray buttons - but rather into the six-part (but still immensely easy) automated and free commercial loan submission system found at the top of our home page.

The return of Wall Street subprime commercial loans - now called nonprime commercial loans - doesn't surprise me.  I always thought that the subprime commercial loans made in 2004, 2005, and 2006 were perfectly fine loans.  Sure, commercial real estate fell by 45% during the Great Recession, but not because a ton of Wall Street subprime commercial loans defaulted.  I don't know the actual numbers, but I would be surprised if more than 15% to 18% of these loans eventually came back in foreclosure.

Commercial real estate fell because commercial property investors were frightened.  The economy contracted.  GDP fell.  There was a genuine panic that a deflationary vortex would start - a cycle where companies started to fail because demand was weak, which would lead to more layoff's, which would lead to even weaker demand, which would cause even more companies to fail, which would leads to even more layoff's...

But commercial real estate did NOT fall 45% because a ton of Wall Street subprime commercial loans went bad.  The vast majority of these loans were good loans, loans that Blackburne & Sons would have loved to have in its portfolio.

So Wall Street is now back and poaching in my fishing pond.  It's largely the same product - commercial real estate loans that are just barely too flawed for a bank.  Only the name has changed.  These loans are no longer called subprime commercial loans.  They are called nonprime commercial loans.

Just remember:  You can find them almost all of these prodigal Wall Street nonprime commercial lenders on C-Loans.com.

Commercial Mortgage Bankers:  You should be calling on commercial real estate loan officers at your nearby commercial banks asking for their turndowns.  Remember, the typical commercial loan officer turns down seven or eight commercial loan applications for every one that he approves.  If you meet a banker who makes commercial loans, be sure to trade the contents of his business card for a free directory of 2,000+ commercial real estate lenders.

Because of all of the ballooning commercial loans, the next three years promises to be the most profitable time in the history of commercial real estate finance.  It is a great time to be a commercial mortgage broker.  It's time that you actually learned the profession, as opposed to just winging it.

How would you like to get the above $549 video training course for free?  Got a banker buddy who makes commercial loans?  Just click on the red button below and forward the page to him.  If he joins C-Loans, you'll earn a free training course of your choice (you may want to become a hard money lender yourself), plus $250 every time he closes a deal for us.

The wise commercial mortgage banker submits every commercial loan request to Blackburne & Sons, even if he also submits it to a few banks.  At no cost, we'll issue a Loan Approval Letter.  You can then show that approval to your banker.  "You can beat this, right Mr. Banker?"  Just like girls are attracted to boys with a pretty girl on their arm, bankers are attracted to commercial loans that other lenders have approved.  So give us a chance to issue an approval for your borrower.  Then, if your banker suddenly leaves you standing there at the altar looking stupid (that never happens, right), you and your borrower can always fall back on Blackburne & Sons.

I was recently assisting an elderly woman with a new commercial loan when I made a troubling discovery.  She owned a prime piece of commercial real estate, a retail store building leased out to a tenant, on one of the most affluent commercial strips in America.  A commercial strip is a major thoroughfare through a town or city that is lined with businesses - typically retail stores, strip centers (known as mini-malls in Southern California), restaurants, and gas stations.

This particular retail store building was a row commercial building.  A row commercial building is a commercial building in an area so built up as to have a zero lot line with its neighboring buildings.  In other words, it's sort of like a townhouse.  Its left and right walls are built right on its property lines, butted directly against the neighboring buildings.  There is no way for even a cat to walk between the buildings.  Row commercial buildings are most commonly found in large cities, like San Francisco or Chicago.

So, anyway, this lady investor owns this row commercial building - easily worth $1.3 million - but she only had the property insured for a measly $290,000.  So I asked her, "Darlene, why do you only have $290,000 in fire insurance?"  She replied, "Well, most of the value of the property is the underlying land.  This is a prime-prime area.  Although the building may be worth $1.3 million, the land alone is worth $700,000.  The building itself is only worth $600,000."

I therefore proceeded to explain the danger of being under-insured.  When a property owner under-insures his property (insures it for less than its replacement cost), he is deemed to be partially self-insuring.  He is deemed to be partially taking on the risk of loss from a fire.

Let's assume that the property suffers a $100,000 fire loss.  The insurance company is NOT going to cover the entire $100,000 loss, even though the insured had $290,000 in fire insurance.  Instead, the insurance company is going to claim that the owner was partially self-insuring.  Therefore the owner must suffer a proportional loss.

Here is how the numbers would work.  The owner had $290,000 in fire insurance.  The replacement cost of the building was $600,000.  Therefore only 48% of the property was insured ($290,000/$600,000).  The fire insurance company would only pay for 48% of the $100,000 fire loss or $48,000.  Yikes!

Guys, do you remember when I told you that the next three years were going to be the most profitable three years of your whole career in commercial mortgage brokerage?  Well, slow season (every April and May) is now over.  Get your tail to work.  There is big-big money to be made in commercial real estate finance (CREF).  My commercial mortgage portal - C-Loans.com - just had its best month since 2006.  Got a commercial loan lead?  Be sure to get it entered into C-Loans!  Our commercial lenders are hungry!

HUGE LESSON:  One of things I have learned over the years is that commercial lenders are very foregiving of flaws in a commercial real estate loan application, if they are in the mood to lend.  If they are not in the mood, they can always find a reason to turn down a commercial loan.  The secret is therefore to find a commercial lender in the mood to lend, but to do that, you may have to present your commercial loan deal to scores of banks.  You therefore need to know thousands of commercial lenders.

The veteran commercial mortgage broker submits 100% of his commercial loan packages to Blackburne & Sons, even if the deal appears too good for us.  The reason why is because we will issue, within 24 to 48 hours, at no cost, a Loan Approval Letter that you can use to show bankers.  "Hey Mr. Banker, I have an offer from Blackburne & Sons, but I'll bet that you can beat these rates, right?"  Think back to your bachelor days.  When you already had a decent-looking girl on your arm, all the girls in town were checking you out; but when your arm was empty, it felt like you had the word, "Loser", written in florescent letters across your forehead.  So use us!  Let us be your back-up lender.  It costs you nothing, and if the borrower starts to panic, you can always accept our deal.

My oldest son, George IV, just developed the most awesome commecial loan calculator.

How would like a free copy of my advanced course on Intermediate Commercial Real Estate Finance or a copy of my classic 9-hour course, How To Broker Commercial Loans?  Just forward a link to your banker, and if he joins C-Loans, we'll give you the training course of your choice immediately for free, plus $250 every time this banker closes a commercial loan for a C-Loans user.

This famous 9-hour course teaches you marketing, underwriting, packaging, placement, and fee collection.

You can now place business loans, not secured by real estate, using C-Loans.

I have good news and interesting news.  First the good news.  Eighteen months ago I predicted that the next seven to ten years would be the most wonderful economic time in the history of the United States.  I still confidently stand by that prediction. Keep wearing your shades because the future remains fabulously bright.

"But George, the GDP is slowing.  Consumer confidence is slipping."

As they say in the gangster movies, "Forget about it." Remember, the U.S. economy lost thousands and thousands of oil extraction jobs when the Saudis flooded the market with oil. Nevertheless, the U.S. economy continues to grow.  It's funny, but just when the country needed some good news to jump-start the economy, shale oil came along.  Now that we no longer need the "push", it's okay for shale oil development to slow down a bit.  Makes me wonder whether some secret cabal of intellectuals knew that it had this card (shale oil) to play and chose the perfect time to play it.  Naw. What's that old saying? "Three people can keep a secret ... if two of them are dead."

Now for the interesting news:  I think it's possible that interest rates have just made a historical direction change.  I am not talking about some minor fluctuation.  I am talking about a direction change as important as when the prime rate first started to decline from 21.5% in 1982.  Interest rates would continue to decline for the next 33 years!

We have all been waiting for Janet Yellen and the Fed to finally start to raise interest rates.  This week the market beat her to the punch.

If you will think back to my earlier blog posts, you will recall my astonishment and awe when I announced that the interest rate on certain government bonds in Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden had actually gone negative!  Bond investors were so nervous about the future that they would forgo all interest payments and even pay certain European countries a tiny fee to hold their money for five years.

This month that strange, strange situation changed dramatically.  Interest rates on the most gilt-edged European bonds suddenly jumped from negative to sharply positive.  Is this bad news?  Absolutely not!  It's just one more sign that much is wonderful in the world.

How can it possibly be good news that interest rates are destined to trend slowly, but steadily, upwards for the next 33 years?  Answer:  Because it means that disinflation has finally come to an end.

In 1981, Fed Chairman Paul Volker finally broke the back of inflation.  Since 1981, the annual rate of inflation has slowly but steadily trended lower.  We still had plenty of inflation in 1985, but the annual rate of inflation was lower than in 1980.  Inflation was lower in 1990 than in 1985, and so on.  This is called disinflation - when a country still suffers from inflation, but the annual inflation rate is trending lower.

"But wait, George, tell me again why it's a good thing that inflation has just returned and that the rate of inflation will actually be picking up speed over time?  That sounds like horrible news to me."

We were all taught in school that inflation occurs when the Federal Reserve injects liquidity into the banking system (by buying securities from the banks).  As the Great Recession taught us, this is not always true.  Bank liquidity only produces inflation if the banks are confident enough to lend and borrowers are confident enough to borrow.

The return of inflation is therefore a very positive sign for both the U.S. and Europe.  If inflation is picking up, it means that business owners are finally feeling confident enough to start borrowing to modernize and expand their businesses.  Hooray!  By the way, my commercial mortgage portal just had its best month in seven years - further evidence that borrowers are feeling confident enough to borrow.  C-Loans closed a ton of deals - including a $5.2MM deal and an $8.3MM deal.

Interest rates in Europe just spiked, despite the best efforts of the European Central Bank, because many of the bigger countries in Europe are picking up economic momentum.  Shockingly, both France and Spain - once considered zombie economies - just posted big GDP gains.

Just because inflation is destined to rise, you should NOT rush out and buy gold.  Everyone thinks that gold is a hedge against inflation.  Uh, not so much.  Gold is actually a hedge against deflation.  (Shocking, huh?).  The reason why is that during times of deflation, the biggest fear is that companies or countries issuing the bonds will default.  Investors suddenly want to own something that cannot default.  Gold is a hard asset that cannot default.

This is one more reason why interest rates on gilt-edged bonds from rock-solid European countries suddenly spiked this month.  Why be content with a negative yield when the world clearly is NOT coming to an end?

Once again, here is my earth-shattering prediction:  Both inflation and interest rates have just made a historic turn.  Both will trend upwards for the next 20 to 30 years.  Time will tell whether my crystal ball is right.

If you click on the link below, you will be taken to a web page that you can forward to your banks.  If they sign up as lenders with C-Loans, we'll immediately give you a free training course, plus $250 every time they close a loan for C-Loans, Inc.

First off, let me introduce myself.  I am George Blackburne, IV, the younger, better looking of the "George's".  What would you guess the number one Google search term regarding commercial finance is?  Commercial Loans?  Commercial Mortgage Rates?  I was absolutely shocked to discover that the number one search term in the commercial loan genre was "commercial loan calculator". 

I did a little research and tried to find a decent commercial loan calculator online. What I found was pretty disappointing.  A vast majority of the calculators online were simple amortization calculators that you can find on any residential lending site.  If you were lucky, you might find a site that mentioned Debt Service Coverage Ratios (DSCR) or LTV but nothing that put all the pieces together.

So, I whipped up a quick calculator that puts all of the pieces together for you. This calculator slices and dices, cuts and cubes, it pulverizes.  This thing is so advanced that after you enter in a few values, it pops out your projected mortgage payment, LTV, DSCR and Debt Yield.  In addition, it shows you the max LTV, DSCR and Debt Yield a lender will allow.

But wait, there’s more!

This thing will give you side by side comparisons of your LTV, DSCR and Debt Yield (if over $5,000,000)  to what a lender will allow for LTV, DSCR and Debt Yield!

Lastly, this will compare your loan scenario to the lender’s requirements/limits and will automatically calculate the max loan amount you can get.  Period.  End of story. 

Play with the numbers, and I think you will see how easy it is to use.   

I received the following email this week that I found extremely interesting and informative:

-----------------------------------

Dear George,

Please save the date: Tuesday, May 19th, Exchange Bank and Upton Financial Group are hosting an exciting seminar for business owners and their advisors titled, “Utilizing SBA Financing Strategies for Business Acquisitions”

Possibly you and your clients might benefit from discovering some of the lesser-known ins and outs of using and structuring SBA financing to fund an ownership transfer to a family member · a sale to employees · selling to an outside buyer · or to fund a growth acquisition.  With one U.S. business owner turning 65 every minute, knowing how to use this source of capital, which can go up to $5 million dollars, to fund a business transition can be THE key to a successful transaction.

Upton Financial Group is honored to participate in this insightful presentation along with Exchange Bank, a locally recognized SBA lender for business acquisitions and transfers. Please see the invitation below for more detailed information regarding topics to be discussed. Please let me know if you can attend, I would enjoy seeing you there.

Sincerely,

David Ryan
Founder and President
Upton Financial Group, Inc.
www.uptonco.com
131-A Stony Circle
Santa Rosa, CA
Direct: (707) 523-9651

-------------------------------------------------------------

Wow.  Think about this.  You can now earn loan fees on SBA loans - not just to finance the purchase of commercial real estate, but now also to acquire a business!

Remember what Dave said.  You can get an SBA loan today, up to $5MM, to fund an ownership transfer to a family member, a sale to employees, a sale to an outside buyer, or a growth acquisition (buying out a competitor).

I sense there is a lot of money to be made taking advantage of this little-known SBA loan program.

We paid our first broker this week on a closing where he brought us a bank and convinced them to join C-Loans.  He made $500 (under an older program).  Now you get a free training program immediately and $250 per closing.

This is the best time in my 40 years in the business to be a commercial mortgage broker.  There is a tidal wave of balloon payments coming due.  If only you knew what on earth you were doing.

My private money commercial mortgage company is starving for deals.

Got a deal that is much too perfect for private money?

Now for my weekly intelligence test.  Would you trade the contents of one banker's business card for a free directory of 2,000 commercial real estate lenders.  Hmmmm.  C'mon, Bubba, 2,000 for one?

You can now place business loans - not secured by real estate - with C-Loans.

The sales lesson that is today's blog subject applies to salesmen in just about any industry - be it commercial loan brokerage, commercial-investment property sales, or even car sales.  It sounds obvious - a salesman should call his leads quickly before a competing salesman reaches the customer first.  Duh.  As they say in the GEICO commercials, "Everyone knows that."

You would think so, but I just got off the phone with one of my loan officers, and I absolutely had to scream at him.  I gave him a world-class sales lead last night around 6:00 p.m., and when I spoke to him today around 4:30 p.m., he still hadn't call the lead.  Are you flippin' kidding me?!  I screamed so hard that my voice is now gone.  I mumble like the Godfather.  I'm  sitting here drinking wine at 5:00 p.m., just to calm my nerves and to keep from stroking out.  A salesman needs to call his leads quickly, before a competing salesman reaches the customer first.  Duh.  Everyone knows that.

Over the past 15 years I have invested around $1.5 million in our wildly successful commercial mortgage portal, C-Loans.com.  You have all heard me boast about the success of the site - over 1,000 commercial loan closings totaling over $1 billion.  What you don't know is that C-Loans has never paid one red cent for advertising.  We get all of our commercial loan applications from organic seaches - not from the paid advertisements that you see above and along side the search results.  C-Loans.com provides great content because at the time I was writing all of those articles to train my sons, I truly thought I was about to keel over from heart disease.  (Recently I got wonderful news on that front.) 

But it costs tons of money to run C-Loans.  Just to maintain the site costs me around $15,000 per month - not counting the improvements that we are constantly adding to the site.  Since the crash of 2008, last year was the first year we exceeded break-even.  Why would I be willing to lose $50,000 to $100,000 per year on a business for six straight years?  Because my hard money shop makes a ton of dough from the leads generated by C-Loans.

Wait a minute.  Blackburne & Sons is certainly one of the cheaper commercial private money lenders, but no private money commercial lender can compete with a bank.  And there are 450 to 500 different banks and credit unions participating on C-Loans.  How can Blackburne & Sons compete against these banks for commercial loans?

Now we have reached the point of today's blog article.  Success on C-Loans is all about being the first lender or broker to reach the borrower.  After that, the borrower stops returning phone calls.  (Please re-read those last two sentences.)  This is arguably the most important lesson we have to teach our participating banks.  It's all about calling commercial loan leads quickly.

My loan officers (except for the learning-disabled loan officer described above) have all learned to call their C-Loans leads quickly - immediately - even if they have a million distractions on their desk.  As a result, we have been consistently out-selling the sleepy, salaried loan officers at the bank.

The reality is that sales leads seldom come in when its convenient.  Leads come in when your kid is sick or just when you are about to take your beautiful girlfriend out for drinks.  Leads usually come in at the most inconvenient time.  The successful loan officer fields his lead calls immediately, even if it is extremely inconvenient.

Once a borrower has sent you a loan package - or once the buyer has signed a contract to buy the commercial-investment property - or once the car buyer has signed a contract to buy the car - he's not going anywhere.  Sure, you want to give the customer great customer service, but ultimately most of us are on commission.  Each of us needs to close sales, and the first salesman to reach a customer usually makes the sale.  So when a lead comes in, drop everything and work the stinkin' lead!  This way your Sales Manager doesn't stroke out, and you get to eat next month.  (I've just finished my third glass of wine, and I am mellowing.  I have decided to simply shoot my loan officer, rather than roast him slowly over a spit.  Sixteen hours to call a great lead?  Hmmm.  Maybe just a couple of hours over a spit first...)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everybody always looks at me as this great commercial real estate finance (CREF) guru, but it took me 35 long years to learn this business.  Remember, there were no nine-hour training courses in commercial real estate finance when I first started in this business.  Anyway, I still learn several new concepts about commercial loan brokerage almost every week.

I subscribe to an absolutely wonderful bi-monthly email publication called FinFacts by George Smith Partners.  As advanced in the industry as I am, these guys make me feel like a rookie.  These guys close the really large commercial loans.  (Don't be greedy-stupid.  Take a modest but numerically large referral fee!)

The folks at George Smith Partners are both life company correspondents (anybody out there remember 'ole George telling them that the real money in the commercial mortgage business is in loan servicing fees?) and commercial mortgage bankers for the really large commercial loans.

Anyway, in one of their newsletters this month, they used the term, "on-book capital providers".  So I asked my buddy, Bryan Shaffer of George Smith Partners, "What is an "on-book capital provider?  Is it the same as as a portfolio lender?"  

Bryan kindly responded:  "Yes. Using their own balance sheet. So, the same as a portfolio lender. Maybe a balance sheet lender may in the future sell the loan, but at least for now they are holding on their balance sheet. I only point this out because it not uncommon for balance sheet lenders to use docs that allow them to sell their loans into a pool in the future. Also today, several CMBS lenders use their balance sheets to do bridge loans that they hope to convert to a perm CMBS when it is ready."

Thanks, Bryan!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I spent $50,000+ (in early-1980's dollars) on my Bachelor's Degree in Business and another $25,000 (in mid-1980's dollars) on my MBA.  I would do it again, but what really made me dough was learning commercial real estate finance (CREF).  Would you invest a lousy $549 and nine hours of your life to learn one of the most hoity-toity of all professions?  Only the rich own commercial properties.

Idiot-rookie commercial mortgage brokers think that it's all about finding the cheapest rate and the best commecial loan terms for their commercial mortgage borrowers.  The old veterans - who close most of the big commercial loans - understand that the borrower, most of all, needs money.  At Blackburne & Sons, we will issue a Loan Approval Letter (often within 36 hours) for free!  The rates offered by most banks sound fabulous, but they turn down most deals.  Suddenly the timely offer from Blackburne & Sons looks awfully attractive.  This is how the old veterans got to be old veterans.  They first get a Loan Approval Letter  from Blackburne & Sons, and then they approached nearby banks saying, "These private money guys want to make me a commercial loan, but you can beat these these stinky 'ole terms, right?"  It's human nature.  Everybody wants to make you a commercial loan when another lender has made you a serious offer.

Got a deal that clearly needs to be closed by a bank, conduit, or life company?

Here's my intelligence test.  Would you trade the contact information of one loan commercial real esate loan officer working for the seventh largest bank in Iowa for a list of 2,000 bankers across the U.S. making commercial real estate loans?  Hmmm.  Tough decision.  (Guys, the only reason I make this grossly-favorable offer is because 95% of all commercial mortgage brokers - not my trainees - will move on to another industry within two years.  If you have decent smarts, this will probably be the single best business deal you will make in your lifetime.)

You can now place business loans - loans NOT secured by commercial real estate - using C-Loans.  The super-nice thing about business loans is that they can close within twelve days, not four months!