Mortgage Broker’s Introduction to Gelt Financial Products

If you’re here, just know that our goal here is to educate new brokers.

A lot of brokers have been asking about how to do business with us, what our products are, and so on.

So, we wanted to put some information together.

Note: If you don’t know yet. We cater to real estate investors and business owners on commercial properties. 

Mortgage Brokers Introduction To Gelt Financial’s Three Core Products

Ok, let’s jump right in.

If you want to do business with us, our three core products are as follows:

Gelt Core ($100,000 to $5M) – On average, this product runs about $400,000. This amount also applies to non-bank people who’ve been turned down by banks, maybe because of credit or structure. We can move faster than banks.

GELT Mixed/Multifamily Bridge Loan Product  ($1M – $5M) – This is our mixed, multifamily bridge loan product. A little backstory about this product. Early on, we realized that there is a void in the bridge loan space, especially in the multifamily space. So, we decided to start doing bridge loans on multifamily housing throughout the country. When you work with us, our rate could be 9%, or it could be 8.5% to 11.5%. It just depends. We can move very quickly on bridge loans.

First Mortgage ($25,000 to $100,000) –  This product is meant to compete with merchant cash advances. Honestly, we see a lot of deals, from $25k to $100k, where people go with MCA loans or payroll loans and take money out of their checking accounts every day. 

And they’re paying the APRs of these at 50-80%! So, we came up with a very small balance deal…mid-teens APRs or rates. It could be a one-year deal, could be a self-amortizing deal. We’re flexible.

Our Reason For Doing This

My main reason for doing this talk is to give you some of our thoughts. You don’t go to McDonald’s and order a pizza. We’re just trying to clarify things. We want you to know what we offer and see if it works for you.

I know sometimes, as mortgage brokers, we all get frustrated. We want every lender to do everything. I was a broker. But as a lender, we at Gelt can’t do everything. And I want to convey to you what we’re great at, what we want to do, and how we can do it for you.

Key Points To Consider When Dealing With Gelt Financial

1. We’ve been in business a lot longer than most companies 

While we’re not a massive company, there’s almost no company in our niche that has been in the business since 1989.

2. At Gelt Financial, you’re always going to speak to a decision-maker

When you call up to run a deal, or if you email us, we get you on the phone with the person who is making the decisions. With us, you don’t need to worry about getting the runaround or dealing with a middleman.

3. We don’t sell our loans off on the secondary market

We keep our loans in our portfolio, which means we have tremendous flexibility and creativity. On the underwriting side, this means that you deal with decision-makers.

4. We are very flexible and creative 

Although we have certain things we do and don’t do, we are very flexible. For example, we did a deal a couple of weeks (maybe a month) ago with a business that was in big trouble with their previous lender.

They couldn’t afford their payments, so we said we’ll make five payments a year—May, June, July, August, and September.

Almost no lender has that flexibility. This goes back to our culture at Gelt. Our desire is to get into the borrower’s head and understand their goals and their desires and try to fashion a deal in a way that meets those goals and desires. We really want to help.

5. We can let you know right away if it’s a Yes or No, usually on the first call

We can let you know right away if we like a deal or if we don’t. The decision doesn’t have to go to a committee.

6. We do no docs

You know, people call us up all the time and say, “Do you do no docs? Do you do no-income assets?”

The truth is we do it all. If a borrower isn’t verifying all his money, we’re not concerned. We’re not the IRS. We’re not the government.

But we use a common-sense approach. What we want is to understand the deal.

7. What we look at is the property

Most of our credit decisions are based on the property and not the individual. We don’t put a lot of decision-making on the borrower’s credit.

We would much rather do a great property with someone who has terrible credit than a lousy property with someone who has great credit.

We’re really focused on the collateral and on the income of the property or the potential income of the property.

8. We are not long-term lenders

People usually take our loans for one to four years. Occasionally, we’ll go five years, and they will pay us off that way. We do have a couple of deals on the books that are self-amortizing.

We’re short-term lenders, but what we’ll do is give someone a three-year deal, and if they’re paying us on time, and they want another three years, we’ll give them another three-year deal.

So, if someone’s looking for a 30-year loan in the mid-single digits, don’t come to us. That’s not our thing.

9. We use our own capital and can move quickly

Speed is everything in this business, which is why we move fast. Case in point, I recently got a call on Thursday for a deal that needed to close the next Wednesday. And the call came in at night. Regardless, within a half-hour, we approved the deal.

10. We stay ahead of the risk curve

Our number one job is to not lose money and to stay in business. We’ve been in business for years and have done this by trying to stay ahead of the risk curve.

That’s why we can’t do every deal. We can’t accommodate all your needs. Trying to be prudent about the risk that we’re taking keeps us in business.

But you know what, we’ve accommodated over 10,000 needs from borrowers.

11. We are not credit score based

We’re really not focused on the individual’s credit when doing deals. We’re focused on the property. We don’t have a minimum credit score. We do deals in bankruptcy, debt and possessions, exit financing, and so on.

12. We don’t do non-recourse

Almost no lenders below a million dollars are doing no recourse. But we’re open-minded and flexible. If you’ve got a great property, talk to us.

13. We do a lot of rush deals

We have no problem doing a rush deal. We have no problem dropping what we’re doing to help get it done.

14. We put your points right on our term sheet

We put your points on our term sheet, and when the deal closes, you’re going to get a wire or a check from the title company.

Some Of The Things We Like

We like deals in populated areas, major MSAs that are easy to rent and easy to sell. We do almost all property types, including mixed-use multifamily, single-family, self-storage, some retail, some office, some hospitality, just about every property type. We do some rehabs. We’re not a big rehab lender in this COVID market, though.

GELT LTV Ratio (Loan-to-Value)

We base our LTVs on value. 

So, to give you an example, we get people calling up all the time and asking, “What’s your LTV?”

Well, our general LTV for corporate is 65%. Our general LTV on the product is also 65% because we don’t want our risk to be more than that percentage.

Now, you might ask, how much does someone have to put down when they come to us?

It depends.

It could be very little or nothing. We look at our LTVs more as leverage, and that’s because we’re not selling our loans. We’re keeping them in our portfolio, and we’re using our balance sheet.  

Deals That Are Challenging For Us

We want to talk for a moment about the types of deals that are challenging for us.

They are:

• Rural areas
• Special-purpose areas and properties—bowling alleys, ice skating rings, etc
• Mines or gas refineries

We like the ability to rent out or sell our properties easily. On special properties, frankly, they’re just hard to do. It’s hard to operate a bowling alley.

Special properties are a little more challenging than a regular 2,000 square foot store or mixed-use building.

Deals We Don’t Accept

The types of deals we don’t work on at all include:

• Assisted living facilities because there’s a lot of licensing
• Nonprofits
• Construction
• Land
• Development deals

I just want you to know this because you shouldn’t be calling us on a land deal or a construction deal or anything like that. 

Work With Gelt Financial

If what we’ve said resonates with you, then come work with us.

We are always looking for ways to help you do business and to be a partner of yours, and to not just be transactional.

And we want you to understand what we do. We want you to understand how we think. The more you understand how we think, the better off you’ll be. And the more we’ll close deals together. Remember, we want to close deals with you. 

Also, keep in mind that 80% to 90% of our business comes from promoting mortgage brokers. So, we love mortgage brokers. We’re always looking for ways to work closely with mortgage brokers. I like nothing more than when a broker calls me up and gives me an idea, or we brainstorm one together.

For more information about us, check out our Home Page. We’d love to work with you.