This training article actually matters to a great many of you, whether you are arranging commercial loans or selling income property across state lines.
Now as you probably know, I am an attorney, licensed in California and Indiana. Now let's suppose that I had a long-time Indiana law client who had a contract dispute with an Illinois company, and my client wanted me to represent him in Illinois in a suit against this Illinois company. There is a legal procedure for me to do this called "appearing pro hoc vice."
Pro hoc vice (pronounced pro-hock-veechey) is a Latin term that means "for this occasion" or "for this event." It is a legal term usually referring to a practice in common law jurisdictions, whereby a lawyer who has not been admitted to practice in a certain state is allowed to participate in a particular case in that state. Now I would be required to "associate in" an Illinois attorney to supervise me and to make sure that I complied with Illinois state law and the local rules.
I promise that the relevance of this article to you will be made clear in the next paragraph. The relevance to commercial real estate brokers selling commercial-investment property will be made clear in the paragraph after that.
Okay, now let's suppose that you have a long-time Utah loan client who wants you to arrange a commercial loan for him on a property in Arizona - a state where a commercial loan broker needs an Arizona mortgage broker's license. Can you legally arrange this loan? Answer: Only if you associate in an Arizona mortgage broker (and pay him $500 or so).
Now if you are a commercial real estate broker, legally licensed in Utah, and you have a long-time Utah investor client wishing to buy a commercial-investment property in Arizona, you will need to associate in a legally licensed Arizona real estate broker. In the parlance of commercial brokerage, you will need to have him serve as your broker of record. But, if you do it right, I am pretty sure that you may legally help your long-time Utah client buy a commercial-investment property in Arizona.
The reason this subject came to mind today is because I received this week an interesting email from a company advertising to commercial brokers, offering to serve as their broker of record. Now I had never heard of a broker of record service before, but when I googled, "broker of record services", I found quite a few companies offering this service.
Now this one company charged the higher of $1,500 or 3% of the total commission; e.g., 3% of 6%. It sounded like a reasonable price to me to pay to keep your tush out of jail.
Keep looking for the contact information (the contents of a business card) of any banker making commercial real estate loans. We'll trade you that information for a free directory of 2,000 commercial real estate lenders.
Have you created a link to C-Loans.com on your real estate web site yet? The links should say "Commercial Loans" or "Commercial Mortgages" or "Commercial Real Estate Loans" or "Need a Commercial Mortgage?"
Remember, the home page of C-Loans.com is programmed to automatically capture the referring URL (the address of your web site) and to print it at the bottom of the corresponding C-Loans application. When the deal closes, we look up the lucky guy who put the link to C-Loans.com on his website and notify him of the big referral fee check waiting for him. We once paid Alan Dunn of Spydercube.com a $21,250 referral fee on a $17 million land loan application that came from his site.
Do you need a lender who will allow a negative cash flow? Do you need a lender who will also look at the borrower's global income - income from salaries, other investments, etc.? Do you need a lender who will allow the seller to carry back a second mortgage? Does your client have a balloon payment coming due on his commercial property? Has your bank offered him a discounted pay-off? Does your borrower have less-than-stellar credit? Is your client's company losing money? Is your borrower a foreign national? Do you need a non-recourse loan? Do you need a commercial loan with no prepayment penalty? Is your client's commercial property partially vacant?
Do you have a squeeky clean commercial mortgage loan that deserves to be financed by a life company, conduit, or a commercial bank?
I keep telling you commercial brokers that there is no easier way to meet high-net-worth investors than to open up a little commercial mortgage brokerage operation (a desk and a phone) in your real estate office.
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