I started in the mortgage business in 1992, at the beginning of a wild refi boom that lasted until 1994. I had learned a lot in a relatively short time, and in the lull that followed the boom I took a few months off and used my experience to write the first edition of my book, Mortgages: The Insider’s Guide, and then plunged back into the mortgage world. I made a lucky connection with a start-up real estate company specializing in the hot and brand new thing in San Francisco – live/work lofts. At that time there were no residential mortgages available for live/work, but through a personal connection I got Eureka Bank interested in live/work, and Eureka became the first bank to do conventional loans in the live/work space, using me as a broker. More lenders then followed, and by 1996 I was the number one loft lender in San Francisco until the end of the dot-com boom. In the early 2000s I refocused my business on Marin, where I had lived since moving to the bay area in 1986. I helped steer my three kids through college, wrote a second edition of my book and became a regular mortgage source for financial media, including the WSJ, SF Chronicle, LA Times, Business Week, and the Washington Post,
I always had some involvement in private money, because the conventional company I worked for had a private money arm, and a portion of my business always included private money lending; I also invested in many private money deals. Over four years ago I moved over to private money full-time, as the VP and broker of record for ACM Investor Services. I love creative problem solving, and private money is an arena where experience can make the difference in making difficult deals come together by finding a way to make them work for both borrowers and investors.