Jack, discusses his experience in providing fix and flip and rehab loans for real estate investors. He shares a story about a challenging time during a market crash in 1991 when he turned a negative situation into an opportunity by lending money to two mortgage brokers for a property deal. This marked a turning point for Gelt Financial, and since then, we have helped thousands of investors make money:
Hi, this is Jack Miller at Gelt Financial. I’m really excited to tell you about how we started doing fix and flip and rehab loans. It’s kind of an interesting story, and it’s one of those moments in life that you’ll always remember. And it started in a kind of a negative way, but it turned into an extremely positive way. We’ve been doing fix and flip loans and rehab loans since 1991, and we’ve probably, I’m guessing, done seven or eight thousand of them. That means we’ve helped thousands of investors make money.
It’s a beautiful feeling from our point as a lender to help people make money. There’s nothing more beautiful than when people are making money and your part of it. You give them the fuel. So, I’ll tell you how it started. It started in kind of a funny way. It was actually, so, it wasn’t funny at the time. It was about October of 1991, and there was a market crash. The whole secondary market collapsed. We had already, and we were a fairly large company at the time. We had about 50, 51 employees, something like that. And we had to just scramble. We were in a really desperate fight for our lives at the time. The top, I think, nine or ten mortgage companies went out of business, and we thought we were headed there. It was scary times. But we actually had a holiday party planned. It was a pre-Christmas party or pre-holiday party, which I think we had at the beginning of December.
I have wanted to cancel it, to be honest. Here, I was in no mood to party. I was fighting for my survival. But one of our really stars at the time, Chris — I’m not going to go use her last name, but Chris, who she knows I love her, talked me into having the party. So, we had the party. Two guys showed up who were longtime mortgage brokers of ours. They were twin guys. They were the best. I had known them for five, ten years at the time. I loved them. And they asked me at the party, and again I was a little bit depressed, they said, “You know, we found this property. It’s a great deal. The economy was sinking.” They said, “Would you lend us money to buy it?” Instantly, the bells went off in my head, and I said, “I’ll tell you what, we’ll lend you the money to buy it. We’ll lend you 100% of the purchase price, the rehab, even nine months of interest, as long as the loan-to-value is 65% of the after-completed value.”
Well, we did, we closed the loan. They fixed up the property. They sold the property. A long time later, in probably seven or eight or nine thousand deals later, we’ve been doing fix and flip properties. So, the lesson of the story is, even when there are negative and bad things happening (and there was a lot of bad stuff), there’s always opportunity. We, at that point, seized the opportunity, and really, it was a game changer for us and the thousands of investors that we financed. So, think of us for any of your fix and flip and rehab loans. We were one of the first people doing it in the country, and I don’t think there’s a company out there who has more experience than us.
Check us out at geltfinancial.com, call us at 561-221-0900, like us on YouTube, and click the buzzer so you’re notified when we post more videos. Thank you, and I want you to have a great day. Now, take care.
Category: Loan Programs
Tag: fix-and-flip
