Clay Sparkman I first wrote and published this piece in its original form in September of 2009. I am of the firm belief that the key to success (defined as: having fun and maximizing your return, two closely correlated phenomena), is rigorous and comprehensive vetting of the loan proposal. If you do this right, the […]
Risk analysis
Two hicks from Oregon go to Malibu – a cautionary tale
Thursday, January 25th, 2018Clay Sparkman I first posted this Blog piece on 11.11.09 at this site. The runway was drenched in sunlight as our plane touched down that morning at LAX. It was a golden balmy day. We grabbed our bags and headed for the rental car kiosks. I don’t recall how it happened exactly, but the fellow […]
Private money for maijuana grow and sell operations
Thursday, December 29th, 2016Clay Sparkman Good article in the Los Angeles Times: Lending money to pot businesses is a high-risk move: ‘This is not for the faint of heart’ A few years back, this was starting to look like a pretty good place to consider investing your private money. Several things were favorable: (1) The general trend nationwide […]
Twenty-eight questions you must ask
Friday, October 7th, 2016Clay Sparkman I first wrote and published this piece in its original form in September of 2009. I am of the firm belief that the key to success (defined as: having fun and maximizing your return, two closely correlated phenomena), is rigorous and comprehensive vetting of the loan proposal. If you do this right, the […]
10 things You should do before you start investing
Tuesday, September 27th, 2016Clay Sparkman Most of my discussions on this blog have to do with private money investing, and trends related to such. I cam across a Lifehacker article recently–one that I had saved in The Pocket to read *later* (if you know what I mean), and was reminded that before one can make sensible private money […]
Leading real estate value indicators
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2016Clay Sparkman Of particular interest to private money investors is to analyze and spot potential trends in real estate pricing. I recently posted an article, Three potentially useful indicators of the likely movement of property values, which proposed three potential indicators to watch. The following article, Unlike prices, real estate jobs not back at peak, […]
Private money – the rules of physics may not apply
Friday, June 3rd, 2016Clay Sparkman I first posted this article in August of 2009. That was right about when I was just getting started with the blog. It is hard to believe that it has been nearly seven years now. At any rate, I feel that this article deserves a second look (or a first look, if you […]
Three potentially useful indicators of the likely movement of property values
Monday, April 25th, 2016Clay Sparkman Any good private money investor should be attempting to assess whether property values are rising, falling, or holding in the area of his/her latest potential investment. After all, the core issue when assessing investment risk is LTV, and if the “V” part of “LTV” falls during the time of your investment, your investment […]
25 questions you must ask
Friday, January 22nd, 2016Clay Sparkman I originally published this article in September of 2009 on this blog. I’m going to make a list today of twenty-five important questions that I believe an investor must ask prior to funding any private money loan transaction. I’m not going to elaborate much on each particular item here, but will drill down […]
How to read an appraisal
Tuesday, November 17th, 2015Clay Sparkman This article was originally published, on The Private Money Broker Blog. on 8/9/10. Some 5+ years later, I feel it is worthy to be modified slightly and published again. Whatever you do in the real estate business, I highly recommend that you give this post a good read. The most important thing that […]
