The $64,000 Question

Ahhh, the life of a real estate investing trainer.  It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t get me wrong, I *love* the students that are soaking up the knowledge and out there making it happen. It’s the “wanna-be’s” and the “know it all’s” that are exhausting.

Lately, as I release more and more training courses, the question I get over and over again is some variation of, “If this is so great, why don’t you just do it yourself instead of selling it?”

It’s a fair question – in a passive aggressive way – so it deserves to be answered. The bottom line is I like to teach what I know and learn. I give away a lot of valuable info for free but the stuff I sell has tremendous value and is worth something.  And I think you’ll notice that my video courses all have $97 price points not $1997.

Which brings me to another issue. Lending.

Here’s a $64,000 I got from a reader today. If you can stay awake during the first part, you’ll get to it… eventually.

Hello Susan,

The reason why Fannie Mae does not do loans for LLCs is because of their charter. Fannie Mae was started during the LAST “depression” to provide liquidity in the US residential housing market for banks who’s deposits were being “run on” by depositors. Because people were withdrawing their funds from banks, the banks had no money to lend to people who wanted to buy or refinance homes. Their charter evolved to help promote home ownership by providing banks and loan officers with streamlined, standardized, and automated underwriting by using their software. So as long as banks and loan officers used their software to qualify borrowers, they knew that Fannie Mae (and similarly Freddie Mac) would by their loans from them at a discount ; thereby continuing to provide liquidity and stability to the US housing market.

So they were never setup to provide mortgage loans for investors. However, home owners do move from one house to another over time, and it’s not always the best time to sell if you need to move. So Fannie Mae allowed home owners to have up to 10 mortgages that they owned. After that, they figured that you must be buying houses as a business. That limit has subsequently been reduced to 4 in the last 2 years to reduce their risk.

So the real questions (in particular for buy and hold investors with more than 4 properties) are:  1) Who are the lenders who are still lending on residential real estate investment properties in the United States (portfolio, LLC, or whatever) and 2) what are their underwriting criteria? The only other alternative is to raise private money.

I haven’t had time to read through all of your emails so far to see exactly what you are offering. But I was thinking…

If you actually know some banks or lending institutions who are still lending to profitable investors with seasoned businesses and good credit scores, why don’t you just broker the deals??? That way, you would get paid based on deals that you actually do and the knowledge you have. Is that what you are doing? If not, why not? — Darren Solomon

And here’s my succinct answer:

Thanks for the history lesson.

The banks that are lending are portfolio lenders and they don’t have wholesale programs. If I broker, the borrower gets charged double origination. Seems like a rip off, no?

Yes, it’s true folks. I don’t want you to get ripped off. The nerve of me!

If you’re like Darrin and have no time to read my emails but still want to get loans from lenders that don’t have to follow Fannie/Freddie rules, check out portfolio lenders.