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 ‘loan underwriting’
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 […]
Resources for private money profesionals
Friday, January 6th, 2017Clay Sparkman I posted this article in 2011, and am sad to say that I haven’t come across much in the way of new resources since. I’m going to re-post, with a few small changes, and please let me know if you know of any useful resources available to private money professionals. These days–with uncertain […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Loan offering in Washington state
Thursday, October 17th, 2013Clay Sparkman We’ve had a lot of nice solid little loans come in lately. (As you know, we have a tradition of, from time to time, presenting one of the loans that we have placed or are in the process of placing, so that blog readers can see (a) the types of loans that we […]
Rehab loan offering in Oregon
Thursday, October 3rd, 2013S. Clay Sparkman We’ve had a lot of nice solid little loans come in lately. As you know, we have a tradition of, from time to time, presenting one of the loans that we have placed or are in the process of placing, so that blog readers can see (a) the types of loans that […]
Finding qualified commercial private money borrowers
Monday, April 22nd, 2013Clay Sparkman This item was originally posted on this site on 4/30/10. I had a sense that it might be relevant once again, and so I have rewritten it slightly and am posting here again. I hope you find it useful. Most private money investors choose to work with brokers. However it is a decision […]
