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MARK…. MY WORDS – A PRIVATE MONEY MORTGAGE BROKER’S DIARY OF DIFFICULT DEALS (Part 2)

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By Mark Robbins, J.D.

CHASE BANK AND THE SOLO 401K

Another loan that stands out on my personal list of accomplishments was a non-recourse loan for an investor who owned a 32-unit apartment building in Los Angeles that he had purchased with his Solo 401(k) some years earlier. The property was worth about $4 million at that time, in 2011. He needed to refinance a non-recourse loan of approximately $1.4 million to cover his debt and loan expenses.

The issue at that time was that there weren’t many, if any, non-recourse commercial lenders for multifamily properties owned in a retirement account. One lender I knew who handled non-recourse multifamily property loans in general (for your average investor) was Chase Bank. I communicated my client’s situation to their loan origination department and was initially turned down because they said they didn’t issue these loans for properties held in a 401(k). The typical nature of a 401(k) means there are other employees who might be involved in the ownership, which makes it too complicated to issue a mortgage.

However, once they realized the ownership was through a Solo 401(k), they reconsidered the transaction. It took a good three months to get the loan approved through the bank’s legal department. I was told this was the first time Chase Bank had approved a multifamily loan for a Solo 401(k), and, as far as I know, they never approved another one.

On top of that, I got my client an interest rate of 4.5% for five years. My client called me almost five years later to thank me again for getting him that loan and told me he had paid it off. His building was free and clear and worth a lot more money! Chalk one up for the small investor, thanks to LRG’s persistence and resourcefulness!

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Moving on, finding business is always challenging. I listed my company with a number of IRA custodian firms as a broker for non-recourse loans, as previously mentioned, so I did get referrals from time to time that way. These loans tended to be small and usually were limited to one-to-four-unit properties. The previously described loan was the largest non-recourse loan I had ever done until 2025, when I completed one for a client who owned 45 homes in his IRA. Therefore, those loan types tended to be much smaller, typically in the $50,000 to $200,000 range. I was grateful that I developed this specialty. I was the only broker in the U.S. for a while doing them. It provided a good, steady income stream for the first seven or so years they were available before they became more common and were offered by as many as a half-dozen non-recourse lenders or specialty firms.

Throughout my two decades in commercial real estate financing, a difficult residential loan request has seemed to find me every once in a while. This has just been a pattern that I’ve embraced since it still falls squarely within the category of helping people solve their real estate financing challenges. Here’s one of those unique situations.

100% FINANCING FOR A RESIDENTIAL PURCHASE?

LRG had a client in 2012 who rented one unit of a duplex in San Francisco for eighteen years. The duplex was owned by the son of the woman who lived in the other unit. Over nearly two decades, this couple helped the older woman with many chores on numerous occasions. When the woman passed away, the young couple asked the son if they could buy the property.

The son lived in Japan and was sympathetic to the couple’s desire to own the property. The challenge was that the couple didn’t have any money for a down payment to purchase it. The son was so grateful to LRG’s clients for helping his mother all those years they lived there that he reduced the price of the property from one million dollars to six hundred thousand dollars.

LRG was able to engage a private lender who was willing to accept the owner’s reduced sales price of six hundred thousand dollars for the couple. The lender, in turn, provided a six-hundred-thousand-dollar loan to enable the clients to complete the purchase of the San Francisco duplex. This 100% financing arrangement is an extremely rare occurrence in the world of residential lending. It certainly wasn’t a loan that a bank would have approved. Hence, another unique problem solved by LRG!

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PACIFICA LAND LOAN

In 2013, I was referred a land loan by another commercial mortgage broker I knew from prior dealings. She had no interest in handling this type of loan. The client was one of two partners who owned valuable acreage in Pacifica, CA, just south of San Francisco. The property consisted of about sixty acres bordering Highway One on the east side of the road. This was a good thing since they wouldn’t have to deal with the Coastal Commission regarding its development.

Their plan was to develop fifteen one-acre lots on the highest part of the property overlooking the Pacific Ocean and build fifteen executive-style homes of approximately four thousand square feet each. The clients also planned to donate the remaining acreage to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) and receive a substantial tax write-off.

The challenge was more than twofold. First, when the clients purchased the land, the sellers carried back a loan of approximately one million two hundred thousand dollars. The elderly sellers wanted to be repaid and divest themselves of this burden. They were threatening to foreclose. My clients had only a limited amount of time to obtain a new loan, or the sellers would take the property back and sell it.

Second, if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, the property was not fully entitled or permitted by the county for the construction of the executive homes.

This deal taught me how to finance land loans. I went on to finance several of them over the following decade, but finding financing for this project was quite an exercise in overcoming rejection and the negative attitudes many lenders had toward land loans in general. I was simply too stubborn to give up.

After working on the loan for two to three months, I came across another broker who knew a private lender I wasn’t aware of. That’s one thing about this business. There’s always another possible lender out there that you don’t know about or haven’t found yet, and it can turn out to be the right lender for the deal.

The lender my associate introduced turned out to provide the solution we needed. The client had also pursued several financing options on his own, to no avail, and they were running out of time. The situation had become desperate if they were going to pay off the sellers and keep the land for development.

The result was a loan with some very harsh terms: an interest rate of 15% and 8 points—5 points to the lender and 3 points to my company. The lender provided a loan of one million three hundred fifty thousand dollars. This paid off the sellers and helped cover all closing costs.

It was another hard-fought battle that ended successfully. It almost didn’t happen, but everything came together in the end. Once again, the personal satisfaction of helping my clients salvage this property was something that’s hard to put a price on, not to mention completing a very difficult loan transaction that no one else had been able to accomplish. We also earned a fair fee for the work we had done.

19 HOMES IN MILWAUKEE

Another unique situation found its way to my desk. The client who was referred to me owned nineteen houses in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They were under the threat of foreclosure if he didn’t pay off the original sellers who had carried back the financing when he purchased the properties.

LRG obtained a $700,000 loan through a private lender in Georgia, which paid off the existing debt and the real estate taxes owed. Suffice it to say, LRG saved the day.

This was one of the few transactions in which the client couldn’t afford to pay LRG’s fee at the close of escrow. There wasn’t enough money to pay the two percentage points the client had agreed to pay at the outset when requesting the loan. The client was an honorable man. He was grateful for what LRG was able to accomplish for him and appreciated the diligence it took to secure the loan. He paid the fee over the course of one month after the close of escrow until it was paid in full.

As the reader can tell, these real estate transactions are unique and demand a great deal of persistence to find a solution. I can say from my many years of experience dealing with all types of specialized real estate transactions that, for every successful escrow closing, there are ten or more deals that don’t make it. Not only do those disappointing deals fail to reach the funding stage, but they’re also wrought with frustrations and disappointments too numerous to count.

At the end of the day, all we can do is be satisfied with the home runs we hit, not the strikeouts we experience. The strikeouts, hopefully, make you stronger and more adept at succeeding in what you do and how you do it.

Meet Mark Robbins

Mark Robbins has pioneered non-recourse financing for IRA investors since leveraged financing became available to the public through a small bank in the Midwest in 2004. Since that time only a few select banks even offer these loans. He has established and maintained relationships with these lenders over the past twenty years.

Mark has obtained non-recourse loans, per IRS regulations, for numerous real estate investors in more than 30 states including Hawaii. Mark is a preferred provider for many of the IRA servicing companies including the Equity Trust Company, uDirect IRA, the Provident Trust Group, Entrust and many other IRA custodial and administrative providers for clients who require non-recourse financing for their IRA funded real estate investments.

Mark graduated from New York University in Bronx, New York with a B.A. in History and Western State College of Law in Fullerton, California with a Juris Doctorate (J.D.). Mark is an entrepreneur and has operated several different businesses over the past forty years including a division of a major commodities investment firm, his own hi-tech executive search company and presently a commercial real estate mortgage brokerage company known as Lending Resources Group Inc. that he founded in 2007.

He has been a real estate investor and developer having designed and built four homes since 1982. He became a mortgage banker in 2002 with Bank of America and went on to work for CTX Mortgage, a division of the home building company, Centex Corp., in Dallas. Mark was recruited to start an in-house mortgage division for a popular townhome development company in San Francisco in 2006. That firm dissolved in the wake of the financial crisis in 2007=2008. During his tenure in mortgage banking, Mark has generated more than $120 million in residential and commercial mortgages for homeowners and investors nationwide.

If you have any questions about how to invest your IRA in real estate, please contact Mark at 415-309-1803 or by email: [email protected]. You can also reference his website at: www.lendingresourcesgroup.com.

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MARK…. MY WORDS – A PRIVATE MONEY MORTGAGE BROKER’S DIARY OF DIFFICULT DEALS (Part 1)

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By Mark Robbins, J.D.

As many of you know, being self-employed is not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. I have certainly worked for both small independent companies as well as large corporations throughout my various careers. I’ve worked for the Bank of America’s of the world as well as private real estate development companies and smaller private mortgage companies. I’ve seen both sides of the employment spectrum. Every experience has its own set of positives and negatives. I eventually decided it was best to pursue my career as a mortgage consultant on my own terms.

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It’s been a very challenging endeavor to navigate the world of real estate financing in the private sector as opposed to the more conservative world of conventional banking. I chose the commercial real estate marketplace for two main reasons. I enjoyed the variety of each unique transaction. Whether I was helping a client finance a small apartment building or purchase a retail shopping center, the challenge was never the same. Secondly, financing mortgages strictly for home purchases or refinances involved too much of the same thing repeatedly.

Lending Resources Group Incorporated was born in late 2007 and licensed by the State of California in May 2008, just before the “Crash,” now known as the Great Recession of 2008. It seems like my career path has been dictated by the ups and downs of our economy over the past four decades. Ever since I graduated from law school and sought a job in the financial industry, I have run the gauntlet of the financial markets’ highs and lows.

GAS STATIONS?

When I was starting out with my own corporation in 2008 under the name Lending Resources Group Inc., I needed to find a source of leads for people who needed my services. I found a company that sold leads, so I subscribed to its service.

One of those leads was an individual who owned Shell gas stations. He wanted to purchase two more stations that were up for sale. After three months, I found a lender that approved a $2 million loan to meet his request. Unfortunately, the client had a heart attack. The good news was that he survived; the bad news was that he had to turn the loan down because his doctor told him he needed to reduce the stress in his life and, therefore, shouldn’t buy any more gas stations. Ugh! What can you do? Absolutely nothing—you just move on.

I had another client approved for a loan to purchase a gas station in Los Angeles, but that came at the same time the stock market crashed and banks were hit very hard in September 2008. Many had to close. One of the banks that closed was the one that had approved this gas station loan. So there I was again, working hard but not earning much of a living due to the investor’s health problems as well as world-changing events.

Disappointing? Yes, but that’s life. Those events didn’t deter me from my goal of building a lasting commercial mortgage financing business. Now that I’m writing this, it’s been a challenging task to chronicle my early days of starting my own mortgage company. After all, that was nearly twenty years ago. I didn’t keep a diary of the deals I was working on. Suffice it to say, I took whatever came along and used my know-how to find solutions. My memory still serves me very well, allowing me to recollect some of the more memorable loan situations I faced.

I was barely scraping by, especially with the onset of the Great Recession. I was lucky in one respect. Since the banks were hit so hard by the economic downturn and because I had a sizable mortgage on my primary residence, they left me alone. This bought me the time I needed to build up my business and, in the interim, see what solutions the banks were going to develop, if any, to assist borrowers like myself. I eventually did receive a workout solution for my home mortgage. I was able to straighten out my financial affairs and stabilize our living situation while building my new business.

NON-RECOURSE LOANS

Business was hard to come by, considering we were in a recession just as I was trying to get my company off the launching pad. Somehow, I was eking out a living. I was very motivated to help people achieve their real estate financing goals. One steady stream of income I developed was specializing in helping investors obtain non-recourse loans (loans without a personal guarantee) when purchasing real estate with their IRAs, trusts, or Solo 401(k)s.

Back in 2004, three years before I started Lending Resources Group, I was introduced to the Founder and Chairman of Pensco Trust in San Francisco. Pensco was one of the largest IRA custodian companies in the U.S. It later became Pacific Premier Trust and moved to Denver when the Chairman retired. This was during the time I was working as a mortgage broker for CTX Mortgage, a division of the Centex homebuilding company based in Dallas, Texas.

The Chairman suggested I investigate this type of mortgage because no one in the U.S. was offering it at that time. Four months after that meeting, a small bank in the Midwest introduced a non-recourse mortgage loan program for people who wanted to invest their retirement funds in real estate and needed a mortgage to complete the financing. This allowed investors to purchase one-to-four-unit properties with their IRA retirement funds without personally guaranteeing the loans. This was required by the Internal Revenue Service because the retirement funds had not yet been taxed. The IRS did not want its tax interest in those funds involved in any transaction that required a personal guarantee. If the investor needed to access those funds in the future, the IRS would then receive its taxable share.

Prior to 2004, if someone wanted to invest retirement funds in real estate, they had to pay all cash. There was no such thing as a non-recourse mortgage for residential real estate investing before 2004. As a result of this new product, I slowly began to find clients, mostly through referrals and word of mouth, while working for CTX Mortgage and working hand in hand with Pensco. They were a great source of referrals for me. By the time I started my own mortgage company, I was becoming better known for being able to arrange these specialty loans. That has continued to this day. These loans have provided a helpful supplement to the main portion of my commercial mortgage business.

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BURBANK BUILDING – MONTH TO MONTH LEASES

Getting to the heart of what I have dealt with over the past twenty years is best described through some of the more unique situations I’ve had the opportunity to be part of.

In my constant search for business, I found another client who was having trouble refinancing his property, an office building. He needed to pay off his existing loan and obtain enough money to make much-needed renovations to the building. The property was located in Burbank, CA, and comprised thirty small office units. The client needed $3.5 million to pay off his current debt and obtain an additional $500,000 to make improvements. I remember searching high and low for a lender for this client but constantly running into rejections because the tenants were on month-to-month leases. No lender I found was willing to lend that much money without the assurance that the tenants would maintain longer-term leases.

The positives of this transaction included having a motivated client who wanted a new loan. He also had good credit and a solid income as a certified public accountant (CPA). Moreover, most of his tenants had been in the building for many years, and occupancy was consistently at 90%, even though the leases were only month to month.

In my dogged pursuit of a loan for this client, I found a reputable brokerage firm in Los Angeles that had connections with several private banks. These were the kinds of connections I couldn’t possibly have had, having been in the private money business for only three years at that point. The year was 2011, and coincidentally, I had to be in Burbank for a family celebration. I also scheduled a visit with my client to further strengthen our relationship.

The affiliate brokerage firm’s private bank ultimately provided the loan my client needed. We co-brokered the transaction. It turned out to be my first five-figure paycheck since starting the company. More importantly, it gave me the great satisfaction of overcoming a very challenging loan request and helping this client achieve his goal of refinancing his office building—something no one before me had been able to accomplish. It was a true feeling of accomplishment!

Meet Mark Robbins

Mark Robbins has pioneered non-recourse financing for IRA investors since leveraged financing became available to the public through a small bank in the Midwest in 2004. Since that time only a few select banks even offer these loans. He has established and maintained relationships with these lenders over the past twenty years.

Mark has obtained non-recourse loans, per IRS regulations, for numerous real estate investors in more than 30 states including Hawaii. Mark is a preferred provider for many of the IRA servicing companies including the Equity Trust Company, uDirect IRA, the Provident Trust Group, Entrust and many other IRA custodial and administrative providers for clients who require non-recourse financing for their IRA funded real estate investments.

Mark graduated from New York University in Bronx, New York with a B.A. in History and Western State College of Law in Fullerton, California with a Juris Doctorate (J.D.). Mark is an entrepreneur and has operated several different businesses over the past forty years including a division of a major commodities investment firm, his own hi-tech executive search company and presently a commercial real estate mortgage brokerage company known as Lending Resources Group Inc. that he founded in 2007.

He has been a real estate investor and developer having designed and built four homes since 1982. He became a mortgage banker in 2002 with Bank of America and went on to work for CTX Mortgage, a division of the home building company, Centex Corp., in Dallas. Mark was recruited to start an in-house mortgage division for a popular townhome development company in San Francisco in 2006. That firm dissolved in the wake of the financial crisis in 2007=2008. During his tenure in mortgage banking, Mark has generated more than $120 million in residential and commercial mortgages for homeowners and investors nationwide.

If you have any questions about how to invest your IRA in real estate, please contact Mark at 415-309-1803 or by email: [email protected]. You can also reference his website at: www.lendingresourcesgroup.com.