{"id":221,"date":"2011-01-05T11:29:45","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T18:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/?p=221"},"modified":"2011-01-05T11:29:45","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T18:29:45","slug":"the-private-money-lending-business-likes-and-gripes-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/?p=221","title":{"rendered":"The private money lending business: likes and gripes (part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clay Sparkman<\/em>
\nAwhile back I published a 3-part post on my Private Money Investor blog<\/a> regarding my personal likes and gripes as a purveyor in of private money.\u00a0 This has been my sole job for the past 20 years.\u00a0 Who wouldn\u2019t want to go rant and rave publicly about their job?\u00a0 I guess I could have easily made it a 24-part post, but that would have been amusing for me, yet not so much for the rest of you.\u00a0 At any rate, I decided that these posts would be relevant to this audience as well, and so I decided to publish them here.
\nThere is a bit of free association here, as I allow one idea to lead to another and so on, allowing my emotions to carry the narrative, and thus these items are in no particular order.\u00a0 So I give you the things that tend to kick start my emotions and get me going (for better or worse):
\nThe trust deed system (particularly as it works in Oregon, Washington, and California) is a thing of great beauty!\u00a0 It provides for order and procedure, eliminating subjectivity (except for in the event of a judicial foreclosure), nicely balancing the interests of the borrower\/owner and those of all the lien holders involved with regard to a particular piece of real estate.\u00a0 Most of the professional investors I know enjoy and appreciate the trust deed system and have a lot more good than bad to say about it.
\nAssociated with this is another wonderful thing they call title insurance.\u00a0 Title companies are the only businesses I know that provide insurance against the possibility of their own error.\u00a0 Knowing title companies as I do, I\u2019m betting against them.\u00a0 I will take title insurance every time AND THUS I shall be able to sleep at night.
\nWhich brings me to the escrow service role of the title company:\u00a0 This is a very tough job, high stress, with many people simultaneously placing multiple demands, and the need to consistently walk a tightrope avoiding costly problems and errors.\u00a0 I most certainly wouldn\u2019t want to do it.\u00a0 And apparently most title people don\u2019t either.\u00a0 Most title companies do a poor job of training and preparing their people and setting a high standard, and thus unfortunately, most escrow services offered by title companies stink.\u00a0 Fortunately there are exceptions.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we often don\u2019t have any control over where a particular closing is going to take place.
\nNow I realize that this post is going primarily to loan brokers, but still I have to do this.\u00a0 I have often heard that 10% of realtors do 90% of the sales\u2014and I suspect that the numbers are even more extreme with regard to loan brokers.\u00a0 A good loan broker is worth her weight in gold\u2014and there are some good ones out there\u2014but there are \u2026 oh so many sadly disappointing loan brokers.\u00a0 Still, we need loan brokers so we soldier on.\u00a0 I figure our loans at Fairfield are about 50%\/50%, with half coming to us through loan brokers and the rest coming directly from the borrowers.\u00a0 The problems in my experience are not so much with honesty (though this certainly can be a problem from time to time), but with matters of basic business professionalism in general and with the specific knowledge of the business in particular.\u00a0 Of course, it is a big step for many loan brokers to move into the realm of private money and commercial lending, but my company works hard to provide assistance, education, and support; we spend extraordinary amounts of time working to educate brokers.\u00a0 If you are already a top-notch professional in the realm of private money, please come and do business with us (immediately).\u00a0 If you are professional in your dealings and organized, but not very savvy with regard to the particulars of private money, come to us with an open mind and we will lead you through the process and do our best to educate you.\u00a0 (Hey, a free education is not so easy to come by these days.)
\nNow here\u2019s one that really gets me going:\u00a0 I am downright angry at banks for not lending money on real estate secured loans any more.\u00a0 \u201cCome on banks, lend money!\u00a0 That\u2019s what you do for a living isn\u2019t it?\u201d\u00a0 We in the private money sector need banks.\u00a0 We lend money to help generally strong borrowers get from point A to point B, and point B is frequently a bank loan (or a buyer who needs a bank loan in order to be a buyer).\u00a0 This needs to change.\u00a0 There are plenty of good safe loans for banks out there that don\u2019t require the banks to disregard every rule of good lending (as they did with many sub-prime loans leading up the collapse in fall of 2007).\u00a0 It reminds me of something Mark Twain said (and I\u2019m paraphrasing).\u00a0 He said that if a cat sits on a hot burner it will never sit on a hot burner again.\u00a0 But then it won\u2019t sit on a cold burner again either.
\nI love my attorney.\u00a0 It took me years to find a guy like this.\u00a0 Everything that you have ever heard that can be bad about attorneys: the opposite is true about my guy.\u00a0 He is honest, pragmatic, honorable, and fair.\u00a0 He knows his limitations\u2014and will be the first to tell you when he comes up against them–but at the same time has a vast breadth of knowledge regarding real estate matters and business in general.\u00a0 And he doesn\u2019t start a clock every time he picks up the phone or answers an e-mail.\u00a0 Believe it or not, he actually seems to charge only for \u201creal work:\u201d research and document preparation and such.\u00a0 (And on top of all that, he\u2019s the kind of guy you\u2019d want to have a beer with.)\u00a0 If you want me to put you in contact with him, I will.
\nAnd speaking of lawyers, I have to say that I really enjoyed Happy Hour is for Amateurs<\/span>, by Philadelphia Lawyer.\u00a0 If you are offended by explicit talk of sex, drugs, and binge drinking, you may want to give it a miss.\u00a0 But beyond the raucous tales, this book takes you right into the bowels of the enormous billing machine that is \u201cthe law firm in America.\u201d\u00a0 This book takes what we thought we already knew and knocks us right upside the head with it.\u00a0 It turns out we knew nothing at all.
\nEnd of part I<\/p>\n

— Clay (sparkman@lendicom.com, 503-476-2909)<\/p>\n

Clay is Vice President of Fairfield Financial, a primary source for private money since 1964.\u00a0 Fairfield is currently targeting loans in OR, WA, AK, CA, CO, ID, FL, GA, ID, MT, NV, NY, OK and TX.\u00a0 To submit a loan to Fairfield for consideration: <\/em>http:\/\/www.privatemoneysource.com\/loanproposal.php<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clay Sparkman Awhile back I published a 3-part post on my Private Money Investor blog regarding my personal likes and gripes as a purveyor in of private money.\u00a0 This has been my sole job for the past 20 years.\u00a0 Who wouldn\u2019t want to go rant and rave publicly about their job?\u00a0 I guess I could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[8,9,12],"tags":[42,43,44,46,54,55,56,57,58,61,67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemoneysource.com\/broker-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}