S. Clay Sparkman What the…what just happened? Was that 2020 that just ran over our nation like a buss out of control, knocking down everything in its path? Uh, yes. Today is January 22nd, 2020! We have a new POTUS and VPOTUS in The White House. We have a new congress ruled by a razor […]
Investor perspective
Covid-19 and real estate markets
Tuesday, March 17th, 2020S. Clay Sparkman Clearly these are unusual times worldwide. We have very little precedent to draw on in in speculating about how Covid-19 will affect real estate markets in the US. Most investors, of course, don’t like uncertainty. So many will tend to take their chips off the table when things get weird. At the […]
Five potentially useful indicators of the likely movement of value
Wednesday, August 9th, 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 […]
Visualizing the industry
Thursday, May 19th, 2016Clay Sparkman With regard to forward thinking (that is, how is the industry changing?): I thought you might appreciate this article, Private Lending Sector Making Big Noise for Real Estate Investors, by Ben Stoodley: Here Certainly he is correct with regard to his interpretation of current trends, and one must wonder how far this might […]
Trust deed lending – ten mistakes you should never make and ten mistakes you must never make
Thursday, March 28th, 2013I first published this post on The Private Money Investor Blog on Dec 19, 2009. It is clearly directed toward a private money investor audience. However, from time to time, I like to post articles on this blog which give more of that particular perspective. If you really wish to understand the private money lending […]
What exactly do you want me to do for you?
Monday, March 11th, 2013Clay Sparkman When evaluating loan requests, this is the fundamental question: what exactly do you want me to do for you? It is impossible to count the number of times that I have receive loan packets or proposals that didn’t include a loan summary or any clear description of the request. The process of evaluating […]
Investing in real estate in 2013: Three articles you should read
Thursday, January 31st, 2013Clay Sparkman On occasion, I try to publish links to articles that are relevant, useful, and interesting. Here are three articles which give useful perspective on the matter of investing in real estate in 2012—each from a different perspective. A money.cnn article on how to find real estate opportunities in 2013: http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/01/real_estate/housing-outlook-2013.moneymag/index.html Dailyresearchhunter.com on global […]
Private Money – The Rules of Physics May Not Apply
Wednesday, December 12th, 2012This article was published in The Scotsman Guide as “2 Private-Money Myths: Debunked” back around the time when the sub-prime market was just beginning to collapse. I thought it might be of interest to some of you on this blog, and so I’m posting a slightly different version here. — Clay Sparkman I would like […]
Good news for real estate markets: could this be the actual turn around we've been waiting for?
Monday, November 12th, 2012Clay Sparkman During the past five years we’ve–most of us who make our money in the real estate market (in one way or another)–had a pretty rough time. Certainly, few of us ever anticipated that we were in for a slump of five+ years. And, of course, there have been the false-starts along the way […]
A private money loan prospectus – Hood Canal, Washington
Monday, September 24th, 2012Clay Sparkman (In October of 2011, I posted this item on my Private Money Investor blog. I thought it might be useful to brokers as well—the idea being so that you may (a) see how we present loans to our internal working investors, (b) gain perspective on our entire private money loan process, from start […]
