HML #18 Closed Yesterday

Supposedly HML #18 closed yesterday. My partner should see the funds hit his account today. This was a pretty short loan - only 3.5 months! On to the next investment!

Hard Money Loan #19 Started

My loan #16 was paid off last week, so my partner was on the lookout for a new loan to make. He found one almost immediately. This new property was bought at auction by one of our regular borrowers. He was the only bidder. He got the place for about $63,000. My partner estimates current value to be about $95,000 and after repaired value to be $120,000. Our loan is for $42,000, giving us a LTV of 44% based on current value and 35% at repaired value. The borrower, again, one of our best borrowers, is personally guaranteeing the loan. My partner was willing to fund this one with all of his own money, but since I had some on hold, he gave it to me. His mother also has a small share of the loan.

The property was a rental and has an unfriendly tenant that might need to be evicted. The area isn't the best, but it's not the worst either. It is near a freeway however, so that's a drawback. The house is a 4 bedroom, 2 bath built in 1912. The interior condition appears to be average with some updating needed. The exterior paint is peeling and the siding may need some work. Again, the location isn't the best, but the exceptionally low LTV makes this a loan I am comfortable doing.

I'm referring to this one as Hard Money Loan #19.

I also got some good news from the Houston apartment complex. July occupancy averaged 93% and turnover declined to just 23 units. These two factors increased monthly revenue by about $13,000 and gave the property its highest monthly revenue figure of the year. Rent concessions also declined.

While that was good news, the bad news was the property was still in a negative cash flow situation for the month. This was due to a couple of factors. As mentioned previously, our mortgage has now switched from interest only payments to interest and principal, meaning our mortgage increased by about $8,000 a month. The hot summer months have also caused the utility payments to be higher than normal. As we enter into the fall and winter months and utility bills decline, the higher revenue should easily offset the higher mortgage payment. On a year to date basis, we are still actually about $115,000 over budget.

HML #16 Paid Off

My hard money loan #16 was finally paid off last Friday. That was a relatively short 8 month loan. My partner is looking for another opportunity now.

July Update

Things have not been too eventful lately.. Hard Money Loan #16 was supposed to be paid off a week ago, but apparently that sale fell through. My partner contacted the escrow company a couple times to try to give them a payoff amount, but his calls were never returned. And we just received another regular loan payment, so all indications are the sale fell through.

Also received a payment on hml #17. Payments have been coming in on that one like clockwork.

Unfortunately, the Houston apartment complex has had another not so good month. After having an occupancy of 90% in May, June's figure rose slightly to 91% but that came at the cost of increased concessions. June also experienced high turnover along with the increased costs that brings (marketing, cleaning, etc). Management expects July's revenue to rebound to about $7,000 more than June.

Expenses actually declined a bit, although the utilities cost rose due to the higher temperatures of summer. Our management company has deferred their fees to help improve the bottom line. Our mortgage switches from interest only to interest plus principal in July, which will raise our monthly payment by about $10,000.

Management is still cautiously optimistic about the second half of the year and they do feel like the overall market is improving. However, the concessions given to attract tenants tend to delay those improvements from showing up in the bottom line for a bit. For the first six months of this year, we are actually running about $105,000 ahead of our budgeted net operating income, although 10% of that amount can be attributed to the management company delaying their fees.

In other news, tomorrow marks the seven year anniversary of this blog!

HML #18 Started Two Weeks Ago

Started another hard money loan. Actually, this one started about 2 weeks ago, but seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. My partner had an influx of about 6 loans to fund and he mislabelled some emails so it was pretty confusing with all the properties flying around.

Anyway, this property is San Leandro and is a 900 square foot, 3 bedroom, 1 bath single family home. It was built in 1942. It was purchased at auction for $195,000. Our loan is for $144,000, giving a LTV of 74%, based on purchase price. The estimated market value after repairs looks to be $250,000. (Comps sold in January and February for $260,000 and $250,000.) The LTV at that price is 58%. The pros of the property: It's on a huge lot. Fix up costs will likely be low, simply based on the size of the house, but the condition of the inside is unknown. The cons are it backs up to a strip mall and the condition of the inside is unknown.

I should also note here there is one more potentially huge con: the borrower is under investigation by the FBI for bid rigging at foreclosure auctions. (I obviously disagree with the comments in the article about how the margins are thin in this business. I've made lots of loans here and I know that is not the case. Just look at this property for example.)  This is interesting. The borrower is one of the biggest buyers of properties in the county and is our biggest borrower. My partner has a very high opinion of him. He always makes his payments early (for example, he just made a payment this week, even though his due date is the 29th of the month). My partner estimates the borrower employs about 10 or more people and runs a professional business. He typically buys 1 property a day and closes on 1 per day. He recently took out three loans with us. My partner doesn't know what the FBI will find or if he will do jail time, but he does figure the guy will probably at least face a big fine.

But based on the numbers, I went ahead and got in on the loan. If we have to foreclose on the property, we're still in good shape. I image the legal proceedings of a foreclosure when the borrower is in jail would be somewhat horrendous, but not insurmountable. And we'd have almost $100,000 cushion to work with.