Commercial Loans and Fun Blog

New commercial mortgage brokers often ask me, "George, what loan brokerage commission should I charge my commercial mortgage borrowers?"

It's not fair for a commercial mortgage borrower or some court to say, "A reasonable fee is a commission equal to roughly $150 to $200 per hour times the number of working hours that the commercial loan is likely to take to close."  The reason why is because the closing rate for commercial real estate loans is far less than one in five.  For newer commercial loan brokers, the closing rate could be less than one in twenty.

A commercial mortgage broker has to make enough dough of the ocassional deal that closes to make up for the dozens of deals that don't close.   There is no law that says a real estate broker selling commercial property has to charge a 6% commission.  The reality is that every realty brokerage firm that tries to charge less than 6% goes out of business.

Commercial borrowers might argue, "The typical fee charged by commercial mortgage brokers is one point."  My response to that argument is this, "The typical commercial mortgage brokerage company fails within three years."  If there are 50 commercial mortgage brokerage companies on my mailing list in year one, by year three that list is usually down to just ten to twelve surviving brokers."

Nevertheless, here is my opinion of the market:

Loans under $500,000:  Bankable deals - 1 to 2 points, depending on the loan size.  Subprime deals - 2 to 3 points.

Loans from $501,000 to $1 million:  Bankable deals - 1 to 1.5 points, depending on the loan size.  Subprime deals - 2 points.

Loans from $1 million to $4.99 million:  Bankable deals - 1 point.  Subprime deals - 1 to 2 points.

Loans over $5 million:  Bankable deals - 0.50 to 1 point.  Subprime deals:  1 point

Construction loans are very difficult to close because 99% of developers who seek out a commercial mortgage broker for a construction loan do not have enough equity in the deal.  At a minimum, a broker should charge one extra point on construction loans.

Tombstone?  What on earth is a tombstone, and what does a tombstone have to do with commercial real estate finance?

First you'll need a little background.  Investment bankers - companies like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch - are not allowed by the SEC to publicly advertise many of their investment offerings.  For example, let's suppose that Merrill Lynch is selling commercial mortgage-backed securities.  Merrill Lynch is not allowed to take out a big ad in the Wall Street Journal and say, "Hey, everybody, come and invest in our latest commercial mortgage-backed securities offering.  These CMBS bonds are paying 4%, and they are very, very safe."

On the other hand, Merrill Lynch is allowed to boast about the successful placement (sale) of an investment offering. The investment banking company might boast in a huge advertisement in the Wall Street Journal something along the lines of, "Merrill Lynch is pleased to announce that it has successfully closed the sale of $1 billion worth of commercial mortgage-backed securities priced to yield 4.0%"

"Gee, George, such a big advertisement in the Wall Street Journal might cost $65,000.  That's an awful lot of money to pay just to publicly pat yourself on the back.  Why would they waste the money?"

Answer:  When investors see an advertisement like that, they think to themselves, "Gee, I wish I had invested in that deal.  I never even got to see it.  I'd better call Merrill Lynch and get on their distribution list so that I hear about the next offering."  Merrill Lynch then fields a bunch of incoming calls from hungry investors and lines them up to invest in their next offering.

When you see these ads in the Wall Street Journal, they are typically rectangular in shape, placed vertically of the page.  They look like tombstones, so hence the name.

Just like investment bankers, commercial mortgage lenders also like to boast of deals that they have recently closed.  In the old days, commercial lenders placed similar tombstones in financial newspapers and real estate magazines.  Modernly, most commercial lenders use email to publish a tombstone announcing their latest commercial loan closing.  In stark contrast to the $65,000 tombstone in the Wall Street Journal, email is almost free.

Now we come to the point of today's commercial mortgage finance training lesson.  Blackburne & Sons has recently enjoyed tremendous success using tombstones to market its commercial hard money lending programs.  Tombstones are proving to be even more successful than our entertaining and educational newsletters.  We now try to alternate between a tombstone and a newsletter every ten days.  Here is an example of one of our recent tombstones.

You don't have to be a commercial lender to publish an email tombstone to all of your clients.  If your little commercial mortgage company closes a nice commercial loan, I strongly urge you to send out an email tombstone to all of your contacts.  They seem to work better than any other form of commercial mortgage marketing that we have ever used.

This year I finished a brand new training course for commercial loan officers and commercial mortgage brokers entitled, Marketing for Commercial Real Estate Loans.   Rather than sell this course on DVD's, we cooperated with Netbility.com, an online education firm, and created a course that can be viewed by our students online.  The new course came out marvelously.

Marketing for commercial real estate loans is tricky, and it is not intuitively obvious.  For example, advertising directly to real estate investors (the actual commercial mortgage borrowers) does not work at all.  It doesn't matter whether you use Yellow Page ads, Google ads, direct mail (snail mail), postcards, or email.  Advertising directly to potential commercial mortgage borrowers is an easy way to waste tens of thousands of dollars.

So what does work?  This is what we will teach you in the course.

Students often have questions about the course, and those questions are fielded by Mick Carlson, the General Manager of C-Loans.com.  I had Mick take the course this week so he would better understand what the course entailed.  His unsolicited response and enthusiam is what prompted me to write this blog article about our new commercial mortgage marketing course.  Please read what he wrote to me this week unsolicited about the course.

"Today I was less swamped with C-Loans tasks and incoming calls/e-mails, so I decided to take full advantage of this and complete the new C-Loans marketing course.  Bravo, George!  ...  Although I've personally heard you preach most of these points multiple times in the past, this course is great.  I'm really glad I watched it..."

Here's what great about the commercial mortgage marketing techniques that I teach:  You get the leads when you need them.  Commercial borrowers often seem to all apply at the same time, like a school of fish swimming under a fisherman's boat.

The problem this creates is that there will be times when a commercial mortgage broker or a commercial lender will be very slow.  Our commercial loan marketing techniques allow you to press a button and almost immediately begin to receive deals.  No longer will you be a slave to the fickleness of commercial loan demand.  When you are slow, you will no longer have to just sit there and twiddle your thumbs.  When you're slow, you press a button and - presto, chango - you're busy with incoming commercial loan lead calls.

What is a commercial mortgage company?  It's basically a desk, a phone, a computer, the relationship with some commercial lenders, and most importantly, the incoming commercial loan lead flow. 

Our commercial mortgage marketing techniques allow you to turn that desk and phone into a practice - just like the practice of an attorney, a tax preparer, or a CPA.  It's all about customers reliably and steadily coming in the door.  Since advertising directly to commercial mortgage borrowers does not work at all - not even a tiny bit - you need to learn how to very cheaply make your phone ring off the hook with incoming commercial loan leads.  And if you receive eight to ten commercial loan leads every day, you will truly own a practice, something that is tangible and valuable.

The course contains more than fifty different marketing lessons, and it is one of my finest works.  If nothing else, for just $199 you'll save yourself from wasting over $50,000 over a 25 year career on marketing techniques that have absolutely no chance of succeeding.  Guys, I have been marketing for commercial real estate loans for 33 years.  I know what works, not because I'm brilliant, but rather because I have painfully and fruitlessly banged my head against so many walls that I finally figured out how to get through the maze.

If you follow my proven techniques, you will be able to turn on your commercial loan deal flow like turning on a spigot.  That's how I can live in the cornfields of Indiana, enjoying the good life of playing some golf and seeing every one of my children's ball games or fencing tournaments.  I'm a rainmaker.  When the Sacramento office needs deals, they call me and and say, "Make it rain, boss."  I do my little magic, turn the spigot, and soon our phones are ringing off the hook.

For a lousy $199 I can teach you to be a rainmaker.  The commercial mortgage business is actually pretty easy, as long as you know what works.  And remember what my General Manager wrote to me unsolicited last week, "Bravo, George ... this course is great."  (His enthusiam is why I decided to blog on the subject today.)  Please click the green button below if you are interested.

Our private money commercial mortgage company lost a $975,000 commercial loan this week to a credit union, of all lenders!  This crazy credit union wrote a 5% loan with no appraisal and no toxic report.  That's insane!

Every decade or so a new class of commercial lender enters the market and starts making goofy commercial loans.  Most recently it was the conduits who were making 82% loan-to-value commercial loans, with a two-year interest-only period before the loan started to amortize, all based on projected rents.  Absolute lunacy!  Not surprisingly, almost 9% of all conduit commercial loans are now in default.

Before the conduits, the S&L's were making huge commercial construction loans on new office buildings with no pre-leasing.  Not surprisingly, the country ended up with a lot of empty, "see-through" office towers.  The country also got to bail out the whole S&L industry.

Before that, it was a small group of industrial loan companies acting like crazy people.  Back in the 1980's, the State of California allowed the formation of a new class of tiny bank-like entities called thrift and loan associations.  (Be careful here not to confuse a thrift and loan association with a  "thrift", which is a slang term for a savings and loan association.)

This was back in the days before Reg Q was replealed.  Regulation Q limited the interest rate that banks and S&L's could pay on federally-insured deposits.  For example, the Fed might say that the highest rate on deposits that a bank could pay was 4.0%.  Savings and loan associations could pay 0.25% higher on deposits, but those deposits were tied up in a CD.  Therefore, Home Savings, for example, could pay 4.25%.

Thrift and loan associations were only licensed to accept deposits in California, but they could (eventually) make commercial loans nationwide.  Since their deposits were only insured by a state fund, rather than the FDIC, they offered even higher rates of interest on deposits, say 6% in a 4% CD market.

For 15 to 20 years, all was good.  These thrift and loan associations wrote fairly conservative loans, and they paid their depositors the promised 6% interest rate.  But then a few of the owners started to get greedy.  They started to make poor-quality commercial loans at outrageous interest rates.  I am talking about commercial real estate loans that would terrify even an experienced, commercial hard money broker.  In some cases, the APR's charged by these thrift and loan associations exceeded 24%!

Not surprisingly, the loans went bad.  Several of the thrift and loans became insolvent.  Their losses soon used up the entire state deposit insurance fund, so a run on the solvent, well-run thrift and loan associations began.  The governor declared a thrift and loan holiday.  The weak thrift and loans were dissolved, while several of the well-run thrift and loans were allowed to change their charters to become "Federal Savings Banks".  The new charter allowed them to obtain FDIC insurance, and a few of these these well-run thrift and loans actually survived.

Now we get to the point of today's blog article.  Every decade a new class of stupid commercial lender enters the marketplace.  This decade the new idiot on the block is the credit union.  These new guys don't know what they are doing - like making a $975,000 commercial loan with no appraisal and no toxic report.  Mark my words, within seven or eight years the credit union industry will take immense losses in commercial real estate lending.

But if you are a borrower or a commercial mortgage broker, do you really care?  Maybe not.  If these guys are idiot enough to make such high-risk commercial loans, why not bring them some loans?

So where can you find some credit unions making commercial loans?  C-Loans.com has a number of participating credit unions.  And let me make one final point.  It's actually smart of the credit union industry to start making commercial real estate loans.  The banks are leaving too many good deals on the table.  But hey, at least get an appraisal and toxic report.  Geesch!

The year 2012 was supposed to have been a total diaster for commercial real estate loans.  Almost $151 billion worth of multifamily and commercial real estate loans were scheduled to mature during 2012, just five years after the insane underwriting year of 2007.

During the heady and insane underwriting months of 2007, some conduits and money center banks were making five-year commercial loans of up to 75% to 80% loan-to-value ... based on projected rents!  A number of these commercial loans were given a one year or two year interest-only period, before the loan started to amortize.  A few crazy conduits even wrote deals up to 82% loan-to-value, and I know that a handful of conduit commercial loans were written up to 82% LTV, with an interest-only period of two-years, all based on projected rents!  Its no wonder that many experts expected a shipwreck in 2012, when these five-year, conduit-style commercial loans matured.

But a funny thing happened in 2012.  Commercial real estate loan (CMBS) delinquencies actually declined from a high of around 9% at the beginning of the year to just 8.7% in the fourth quarter of 2012.  Every quarter of 2012 the delinquency rate declined.  It's no wonder that confidence has returned to the commercial real estate mortgage bond market.

So what happened?  New commercial real estate construction during the Great Recession came to a complete halt.  With no new buildings coming on line, there was less competion for tenants.  The commercial properties securing most conduit loans were also larger, better-located, better-managed, and more desirable than the typical small commercial property.  Occupancy rates for conduit-quality commercial properties held up surprisingly well. 

As Treasury bond yields plummeted, real estate investors became desperate for yield.  Cap rates compressed, and many commercial properties, those that were well-leased, actually saw some appreciation.  Finally, property owners were forced to become more efficient.  Costs declined and net operating incomes actually improved.

In the end, most commercial real estate owners were able to either refinance their ballooning loans in 2012 or sell them for more than what they owed on the property.

How does the future look for commercial real estate loans?  It looks excellent.  Almost $151 billion in commercial real estate loans matured in 2012.  According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, less than $120 billion in commercial real estate loans are scheduled to mature in 2013.  Even fewer commercial loans will mature in 2014.  The years 2015, 2016, and 2017 will be a bit more challenging, as the ten-year loans written in 2005, 2006, and 2007 finally mature.  With no new commercial construction going on, however, the challenge should be quite manageable.

Bottom line:  The crisis in commercial real estate financing is arguably over.  There will probably be no new flood of commercial real estate foreclosures.

There are two kinds of commercial mortgage-backed bonds. The most popular kind is a standard conduit deal, known as a commercial mortgage-backed security ("CMBS"). A typical CMBS deal is a $6 million first mortgage on an attractive office building that is only 63% LTV in some primary market, like Washington, D.C. or New York City. Please click here if you need a CMBS loan.

A less-well-known kind of commercial mortgage-backed bond is an Asset-Backed Security (ABS) that happens to be backed by subprime commercial mortgages. You can think of these subprime commercial mortgages as less-than-perfect or hard money quality deals.

Each subprime commercial mortgage in the typical Asset-Backed Security portfolio has some sort of black hair.  Maybe the lease is short term.  Maybe the property has some vacancies.  Maybe the LTV is higher than the 63% that most CMBS lenders will allow.  Maybe the borrower has less-than-perfect credit.  There will always be some black hair.

Now main characteristic about an ABS offering is that the lender will accept several different types of loans into the portfolio - typically scratch-and-dent residential loans, subprime commercial loans, car loans, and credit card loans.  The theory behind an ABS offering is that the end bond investors enjoy more diversification.  Not all of their investment is backed by car loans or commercial real estate loans.  Maybe commercial real estate is depressed but car loans are paying like a slot machine.

Another important characteristic about ABS bonds is that they typically offer 2% to 2.5% higher yields than CMBS bonds. You find a number of subprime commercial lenders here.

Here's the point of this article:  Yield-starved bond investors absolutely love bonds backed by commercial mortgages right now - even ABS bonds. This is very, very bullish for the future of commercial real estate lending ... and ultimately commercial real estate values.

Yesterday I wrote a blog article explaining that if you buy a commercial property with your IRA, and you get a commercial mortgage loan from the bank to help you finance the purchase, you need to get the bank to make you a non-recourse loan (good luck with that).  If you don't, your IRA investment constitutes a prohibited transaction.

A non-recourse loan is one where the bank cannot come back after you personally for a deficiency judgment if they foreclose and take a loss.

I pointed out in my article yesterday that few banks will make non-recourse loans these days.  Fortunately Blackburne & Sons would be happy to make a non-recourse commercial real estate loan to your IRA.

Okay, but then a question came up.  What about a carve-out clause?  A carve-out clause is a provision in a non-recourse loan that says if a borrower commits certain Bad Boy Acts that the commercial loan suddenly becomes a full-recourse loan.

So what is a Bad Boy Act?  Bad Boy Acts include the following "bad-boy" behaviors:

(i) fraud or intentional misrepresentation by the borrower (you lie to the lender to get the loan in the first place); (ii) waste occurring to or on the mortgaged property (you take a sledgehammer to the property right before you lose it in foreclosure); (iii) gross negligence or criminal acts of the borrower that result in the forfeiture, seizure or loss of any portion of the mortgaged property (you set up a meth lab in the property and the government seizes the property); (iv) misapplication or misappropriation of rents, insurance proceeds or condemnation awards received by the borrower after the occurrence and during the continuance of an event of default (you steal the insurance proceeds check); and (v) any sale, conveyance, mortgage, grant, bargain, encumbrance, pledge, assignment or transfer of the mortgaged property, or any part thereof, without the prior written consent of the lender (you put a second mortgage on the property even though the loan documents specifically forbid it).

So here's the question?  Can a non-recourse loan to an IRA have a carve-out provision?  The answer is that no one knows for sure.  The IRS has yet to litigate it.  My personal opinion is that the IRS would probably NOT declare a non-recourse mortgage loan to be a prohibited transaction simply because it contains a few standard carve-outs.

Let's suppose you have a self-directed Individual Retirement Account, and you are very bullish on commercial real estate (see my previous blog article).  Let's further suppose that you find an attractive $200,000 industrial condominium in a primary market (say San Jose, California or Austin, Texas).  You decide to buy the industrial condo with your IRA and lease it out to some independent third party.

So you go down to the bank and apply for a $130,000 new conventional commercial first mortgage loan.  You plan on putting down $70,000 (35%) from your IRA.  The bank comes back with an approval on your loan, subject to, of course, your personal guaranty.  All is good and right in the world.

Oops.  Did you know that if you personal guaranty your IRA's loan, it constitutes a prohibited transaction?  Yup.  You can't do it.

Okay, so what do you do?  Simply ask your bank to waive the personal guaranty requirement.  Uh-oh.  Your commercial bank will probably say no.  Banks have always been reluctant to make non-recourse loans - meaning they cannot go back after you for a deficiency judgment.  And since the Great Recession, they are even more reluctant.

Here's one solution.  Apply to Blackburne & Sons's Realty Capital Corporation.  As a private money lender, we will gladly make you a non-recourse loan.

Banks are slowly returning to commercial real estate finance - but the operative word is slowly.  They are acting as if commercial real estate lending is as risky as playing Russian Roulette.  I submit that is is safer to make commercial real estate loans today than at any other time in the past decade.

Blackburne & Sons (est. 1980) was in business during the Savings and Loan Crisis back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.  Just like during the Great Recession, commercial real estate values plunged by around 45%.  Then the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) stepped in and quickly started selling off the resulting commercial foreclosures at just 50 cents on the dollar.

The buyers of those foreclosures made a fortune.  Blackburne & Sons financed a lot of these purchases.  Our new loans were paid off in around nine months, as the buyers of these foreclosures sold them off for an average profit of 80%.

My instincts tell me that we are in a similar commercial real estate recovery.  The Fed has printed $5 trillion to $10 trillion in new money.  Our banks are healthy and super-flush with reserves.  The auto industry has already rebounded.  Housing is recovering.

Jobs are returning to the U.S.  We have by far the lowest natural gas prices in the world, giving the U.S. a huge cost advantage in heavy manufacturing.  The U.S. already produces 84% of its own energy needs, and by the end of the decade, we are projected to be energy-independent.

Capital is pouring back into commercial real estate.  The commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) market is hotter than a pistol, as yield-hungry investors are snapping up these bonds.  Even lower-quality asset-backed securities (ABS), backed by hard-money-quality commercial real estate loans, are flying off the shelf.

I don’t expect commercial real estate values to double any time soon, but it is my opinion that the commercial real estate market is once again in a bull market.  This is why it may be safer to make commercial real estate loans today than at any time in the past decade.

If your bank is considering a return to commercial real estate lending, you would be crazy not to join C-Loans.com as a commercial lender.

This article is designed to help commercial lenders and commercial mortgage brokers close more commercial real estate loans.

First let's define a term:  Lead nurturing is the process of repeatedly touching a sales prospect and gently encouraging him to buy.  Commercial real estate loan officers are salesmen, and financially-strong commercial property owners are our sales prospects.

To understand the concept of lead nuturing, let's consider an example.  Suppose you're a commercial mortgage broker, and you receive a lead call from a good, potential, commercial mortgage borrower, who is kicking around the idea of borrowing against his free-and-clear office building.  It's a really good deal, and you are sure you can provide him with an excellent commercial loan.  You make your sales pitch over the phone, and your potential borrower tells you that he'll think about your offer.  Now what?

The wise commercial mortgage broker will then nurture this lead.  He will touch the borrower at least six times over the next six weeks or so.  A touch can be a personal visit, a phone call, a letter, or an email.  The Notches on the Belt Theory of Marketing suggests that people seldom buy until they have thought about buying on at least six, separate, independent occasions.  Hence our strategy is to touch this borrower at least six times.

Your lead nurturing campaign might start with a follow-up email.  "Dear Mr. Swartz:  Thanks for chatting with me today about your commercial loan.  I am sure that we can accomodate your needs.  Below is my contact information for future reference."

Then, because snail mail takes a day or two to arrive, you might print out a copy of this email and throw it in an envelope hand-addressed to the borrower.  You should also probably throw in two business cards.  This will be your second touch.

Three days later you might telephone the borrower and see how he's coming with his loan package.  That's touch number three.

You could send him a second email thanking him for chatting with you again, which would be touch number four.

For several decades I kept an envelope box, filled with envelopes addressed to potential borrowers.  In the upper-right-hand corner, right where the stamp goes, I wrote in pencil the date that the envelope was scheduled to go out.  None of the envelopes were sealed, but each contained a follow-up letter and two busines cards.

Every morning, right after I made my coffee, I would sit down and go through these pre-addressed envelopes that were scheduled to go out that day by snail mail.  If I had already received a package from the borrower, I did not send out a follow-up letter.  Instead, I opened the envelope and saved the two business cards.  Later I would re-use the envelope by covering the address with a label.

If I had NOT yet received a package from the borrower, I would glue a stamp over the date and send it out.

Now let's go back to our lead nurturing example.  So far we have touched the borrower four times.  Using a "Timed Mail Piece" follow-up system (the envelope box), I might send him two more snail mail follow-up letters.

Modernly I no longer use snail mail at all.  Instead I use this wonderful software designed by Hubspot.com.  I have already written six follow-up emails, and to nuture a good lead, all I have to do is enter the borrower's or broker's email address into Hubspot.  It's pretty cool.

You now know one of my greatest marketing secrets.  Once I find a good lead, I nurture that lead religiously at least six times.