Commercial Real Estate Finance:
What to Do Now

An Interview with George Blackburne

We hear something like this from our customers almost every day: “It’s really a great time to buy property, and if I could get the financing I would certainly do more deals.”

We hold ourselves out to know a few things about real estate finance, but we must confess that we don’t know where the treasure is buried. So we decided to ask an expert: George Blackburne, III , founder of C-Loans and Blackburne & Sons Realty Capital Corporation.

RD: George, we know you’ve been in commercial finance for decades. Give us your boots-on-the-ground assessment of where we are now.

GB: Clearly, it is much more difficult to finance commercial property than it has been in a very long time. But I don’t agree with the conventional wisdom that you simply can’t get a loan. It’s going to require a lot more digging, but if the deal is a good one then it’s not impossible.

RD: Who’s lending now?

GB: It’s pretty much the hard money lenders and the banks. Gone are the conduits, mortgage REITS and other players.

RD: But a lot of our customers say the banks they’ve always done business with don’t want to talk to them.

GB: They have to understand that it’s a whole new ballgame, a sea change. You can’t rely on your usual lenders anymore. Perhaps most important, you have to forget about visiting just two or three lenders and expecting to get a loan. Plan on submitting your deal to 30-50 lenders. That’s what it will probably take right now.

RD: 30-50?

GB: Yes. I know one guy who approached 112 lenders – but he got the loan and closed the deal.

RD: I want to ask you more in a minute about what borrowers should be doing when they approach these lenders – how they can improve their chances of success – but first ...

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New Resource for Home Refinance

And while we're on the subject of financing... A recent New York Times article alerted us to a new resource for homeowners interested in refinancing. We took a look and refinance.com appears to be more than your garden-variety look-up-some-lenders-and-rates kind of site. They feature what they call the Home-Account Mortgage Engine™ which they represent as helping borrowers improve their loan application and identifying a loan best suited to meet their specific needs.

Even if you're not actively shopping for a loan, the site is worth a visit to browse its resource center. There is a great deal of excellent content provided there by Jack M. Guttentag. Guttentag, who is popularly known as "The Mortgage Professor," is in fact Professor of Finance Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His articles are definitely worth reading.

CCIM 2010 President Discusses Institute's Impact, and the Year Ahead for Commercial Real Estate Brokers

realtytimes.com has posted an excerpt of a radio show interview by Peter L. Mosca with Richard Juge, CCIM, 2010 President of the Institute. What we found particularly interesting were two comments.

Near the beginning of the interview, Juge remarks, "...I think some of the more educated in the business are saying that this is the time to buy. You never know when you're at the top, and you never know when you're at the bottom, but we see 2010 as the recovery year." And again near the end he adds, "...I firmly, firmly, firmly believe this is the turn around year for brokers. Take heed. We're predicting more deals, not bigger deals necessarily, but more deals."

Only time will tell, of course, if he is right, but it's good to hear an upbeat assessment from the head of an organization as important to the industry as the CCIM Institute.

What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow... makes the Top-10 list at realtor.org

We were delighted to see tweets flying around recently about realtor.org's BookScan. What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow... by RealData founder Frank Gallinelli came in at #5 on their top-10 list. The book was originally published in 2004, then released in a new edition in 2008. It has been one of the top-selling real estate books on Amazon for the past six years.

Gallinelli has written a sequel, Mastering Real Estate Investment, which is also climbing the charts at Amazon.

New Version 15 of Real Estate Investment Analysis

Looking for financing or equity investors, or need to deliver a killer proposal to a client? Our new enhancements to REIA will help you make your case with more compelling presentations to lenders, partners, clients and customers. We've also added a dash of globalization to help broaden the reach of those spiffier proposals. Get details about the new Professional Edition.

Need Something Simpler?

If you don't require all the power of our Professional Edition, then check out our new Express Edition. You can use its 3-mode design for a detailed or quick analysis, or even for a short-term month-by-month plan for re-habs.

Reminder: Free Shipping on RealData Software

We're continuing our offer of free USPS first-class shipping on any software order over $50. For details, check our blog.

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