Clay 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 […]
Risk management
Three potentially useful indicators of the likely movement of property values
Monday, April 25th, 2016How 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 […]
How to read an appraisal
Friday, March 29th, 2013Clay Sparkman This article was originally published, on The Private Money Broker Blog. on 8/9/10. Some two and a half hears 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 […]
Twnety-five questions you must ask (re-post)
Friday, February 22nd, 2013Clay Sparkman I originally published this article on this blog in September of 2009. It is as relevant ans useful, I believe, today as it was then. 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 […]
A good time for private money investing (or so we think)
Monday, September 19th, 2011Clay Sparkman We’ve been getting quite a few calls from new investors lately who are interested in investing in trust deed secured loans. This makes a certain amount of sense to me, as a number of factors are lining up to enhance the attractiveness of this type of investing. The factors I have in mind […]
Squeezing loans into the box (by thinking outside the box)
Thursday, March 17th, 2011Clay Sparkman As you all know, sometimes we have to be creative to get loans done in this market. One of the most critical aspects of any loan (as you well know) is the Loan to Value ratio, and there are often options for reducing the LTV to make the deal more attractive. For purchases, […]
How to invest in private money loans when real estate markets are uncertain
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011Clay Sparkman We’ve been through nearly 3 ½ rough years in the real estate market—and projections seem to indicate that we will finally see clear up-turn in the second half of this year, but no one really knows for sure. We have managed to survive this down-time (thus far) and continue doing loans even in […]
A brief unofficial analysis of the private money market for investors
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010Clay Sparkman The national economy is in a state of confusion and the local economy is in a state of confusion. So what does this mean for the market for investing in trust deed based loans? Well of course nobody really knows–and this is just my take on it–but here goes: First of all, let’s […]
Those who shorted subprime
Monday, May 24th, 2010Clay Sparkman I just recently finished reading The Greatest Trade Ever, the 2009 book by Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman. It is a terrific read. I really enjoyed it. It evolves primarily around John Paulson, and tells the story of how he managed to make billions of dollars for himself and his hedge fund […]
Don’t put all your egg baskets in one egg truck
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010Clay Sparkman Colloquialisms are funny things. We use them pretty much every day in our speech and in our writing and yet most of us, I suspect, though we know the meanings of the expressions, frequently don’t know why the individual words have come to mean what they mean. Take for example: “Don’t look a […]
