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 […]
Posts Tagged ‘investing’
Don’t put all your egg baskets in one egg truck
Thursday, August 1st, 2019Clay 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 […]
The Round Table, with King Arthur
Wednesday, March 27th, 2019S. Clay Sparkman I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I must say, we’ve seen good times and some bad. I’ve been involved in several thousand private money loans. Certainly, I’ve experienced a full cross section of the private money lender perspective. One might wonder, how can a long-term private money lender expect to […]
Real estate values – what’s next?
Monday, February 4th, 2019S. Clay Sparkman It has been quite a challenge this past dozen years predicting the movement of real estate market values. Values spike. values crash, values spike again, and then … maybe get a little squishy. Also, note the strange happenings in the national political machinery. It might be perilous to ignore this entirely. For […]
Private money – whole loans vs fractional share loans
Thursday, November 29th, 2018S. Clay Sparkman This issue nearly always comes up in early conversations with new potential investors. Working with private money investors, we are able to fund loans in two different ways. (1) Single loan/single investor – This is probably most common. It is quite simple. A potential investor evaluates a loan, and if she chooses […]
Will Amazon’s HQ2 sink Seattle’s housing market?
Tuesday, November 13th, 2018S. Clay Sparkman Will Amazon’s HQ2 sink Seattle’s housing market? https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/will-amazons-hq2-sink-seattles-housing-market/ Probably not much, but it should pump up the markets in NYC and DC even furthur. Best, Clay – Clay (clay@privatemoneysource.com, 503-476-2909) Clay is Vice President of Fairfield Financial, a primary source for private money loans since 1964. Fairfield works with a broad range […]
Getting started with private money investing
Thursday, October 25th, 2018Clay Sparkman I am frequently asked by private money investors: “… so how do we get started investing in private money loans?” You know, there is no simple answer to this question. I tell them that it is kind of like dating. If we are going to do this as an investor/broker team, then they need […]
The west coast is on fire
Tuesday, March 6th, 2018Clay Sparkman Between Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, and San Diego, home prices are off the charts. We broker short-term loans to real estate investors, so if you wish to invest in trust deeds in these markets, consider contacting us. And check out these two recent articles: A Third of U.S. Homebuyers Are Bidding Sight […]
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 […]
Five potentially useful indicators of the likely movement of value
Friday, August 11th, 2017Clay Sparkman Any good real estate 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 question when buying investment property (particularly short-term) is, “what is value likely to do in the next year or so?” If you sense […]
