Build Trust Fast: 5 Secrets to Quick Closings in Real Estate Investing

Michael Stansbury (00:00.539)
Hello everybody and welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. Today with me all the way from Phoenix, Arizona is Ranette Oliver. Ranette, how are you today?

Ranette Oliver (00:13.272)
Hey Michael, I’m great. How are you?

Michael Stansbury (00:18.187)
Excellent, excellent. It’s good to have you here. I wanted to let everybody know that’s watching the podcast that at Investor Fuel, the sponsor of this podcast, we help real estate investors, service providers and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five extra businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Ranette, this is my question for you to start off.

How did you go down the yellow brick road of real estate? When did you start or were you doing something beforehand? How did you get in the business?

Ranette Oliver (00:49.652)
Yeah, great question. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it. So I did banking and lending for the first 10 years of my career. And then that was kind of like the backdrop, if you will, and stayed home with my kids and met the owner of this company about 10 years ago. And I hadn’t done real estate before. my real estate license. I did wholesaling for three years. All of the in-house stuff for a company. then in 2000,

17, 18? I got my LO and moved over to kind of the bread and butter of our company, which is private money lending for fix and flippers and developers. And the rest is history. I’ve been doing it for almost 10 years and I love it. It’s my, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

Michael Stansbury (01:22.331)
you

Michael Stansbury (01:38.635)
Okay, so you started off in banking and finance and so it’s interesting that that was the of the seed bed. So how did you meet the owner of the company? How did that work and what made him go, hey, you know what, you need to come over here and come along and let’s crush real estate together.

Ranette Oliver (01:57.582)
Well, he’s, he’s an amazing man that own of our company. He’s, he’s been doing this for a long, long time. Uh, but he and I, when we met, I think there were probably four people on staff and now we have 11. We’re pretty small. Um, he does what he does. He just does it well. And he’s like a serial entrepreneur. Um, and we just met and had a conversation and he honestly was just looking for somebody that, um, was teachable and had good character and just kind of fit the.

the culture of kind of his company. so it was, it was kind of like, I was thrown into the fire, got my license, did wholesaling, and then a years later got my LO. And since then I’ve been brand developing and business development, leading a sales team, kind of, you know, opening the doors to some of the growth that we’ve had in new markets. And I’ve had a lot of great opportunities in, you know, working for Mike and working for B.E. Lending. So that’s…

Michael Stansbury (02:39.355)
And since then I’ve been brand developing and resist development, leading a sales team, of opening the doors to some of the growth that we’ve had in new markets. And I’ve had a lot of great opportunities in working for Mike and working for me, lending. So that’s in a nutshell kind of how the project started and what’s led me to where I’m at.

Ranette Oliver (02:57.62)
in a nutshell, kind of how it started and what’s led me to where I’m at.

Michael Stansbury (03:04.961)
Awesome. So how are you guys different there? And there’s a lot of people that are there. People in local markets, there’s national lenders, there’s lot of people in the game of trying to fund the deals. can’t tell you, I get multiple texts, seems like every 45 minutes of somebody trying to lend me money. How are you guys different from in the marketplace? Tell me about that.

Ranette Oliver (03:21.699)
Yeah.

Ranette Oliver (03:28.482)
Yeah, I love this question. It’s my favorite. Because yeah, you’re right. It’s a saturated market and there’s a lot of people out there willing to give people money for their deals and every single hard money lender, private money lender has kind of their own specialty, if you will. But there’s a lot of commonalities between them. So we’re a lot different because we’re very focused on the relationship.

We’ll lose a loan all day long if it means that it’s not a good deal for our borrower Which isn’t something you can say for too many hard money lenders and we We’ve got about a hundred million blended under management if I fund but it’s all high net worth individuals So there’s no bank leveraged capital that we’re utilizing so our investors have preff and You know, we have never lost money for an investor

Michael Stansbury (04:06.363)
too many hard money lenders.

Michael Stansbury (04:12.647)
I fund, but it’s all high-net-worth individuals. So there’s no bank-leveraged capital that we’re utilizing. So our investors have

Ranette Oliver (04:24.918)
just kind of a backdrop to how that goes. We pay them 9%. They can compound it or they can get a check monthly. And then we lend it out at around 13 and we keep the arbitrage. Their funds are semi-liquid. They need it back within a couple of weeks. We can typically get it to them because we just have quick turnaround. It’s all bridge, bridge lending. And their name’s not on the deed. So it’s…

Michael Stansbury (04:37.127)
and we keep the arbitrage. Their funds are semi-liquid. needed that.

Now you’re good.

Ranette Oliver (04:52.278)
It doesn’t affect them if anything were to go wrong, but we are very conservative in how we evaluate our deals. And that is something that’s huge about the way that we operate versus other hard money lenders. don’t, sorry, we don’t, we don’t need appraisals. So because we’re also licensed realtors, we do our own valuations in-house and we can do them quickly. We are confident in our values and we’re not waiting on an appraiser.

Michael Stansbury (05:15.547)
We do our own vibrations in-house and we can do them quickly. are confident in our values.

Ranette Oliver (05:21.518)
to come in and then have to argue it or what have you. So that is something that helps us to move quicker, sets us apart. I know there’s a lot of, you know, private money guys out there that they’ll get to the day of closing after having given terms and then decide we need an appraisal. And then they call us and we close. So I think our quickest close was like four hours because we just, we can operate really quickly. We have the funds, we have the capital.

Michael Stansbury (05:24.601)
to come in and then just to argue it or…

Michael Stansbury (05:29.979)
I mean, that helps us to move quicker, steps us apart. I know there’s a lot of, know, money guys out there that go get to the day of closing after having given terms and then decide, we need an appraisal. And then they call us and we close. So I think our quickest close is like four hours because we just, we can operate really quickly. And then we have the funds, we have the capital. We almost never run out of capital if we need to, we’ll raise more.

Ranette Oliver (05:51.66)
We almost never run out of capital. we need to, we’ll raise more. And so if somebody is getting terms for a deal and we’ve finalized those and given them a term sheet and they’ve agreed, we don’t change those terms. We close when we say we’re going to close. And that has given us a huge kind of…

Michael Stansbury (06:00.027)
So if somebody is getting terms for a deal and we finalize those and give them a term sheet and they’ve agreed, we don’t change those terms. We close when we say we’re going to close. that has given us a huge kind of…

Ranette Oliver (06:17.486)
What am I looking? What is the word I’m looking for? of a leap ahead.

Michael Stansbury (06:21.355)
You’re like, the easiness of it, the easy button of it is, and then you said it was relational as well. And so, you know, I’ve been to those closings and I’ve heard those nightmares. I’ve wholesale to deal with a couple guys and at the end of they’re like, well, we gotta punt it for a couple days because the lender wants now an appraisal. I’ve been on both ends of that.

Ranette Oliver (06:29.538)
Yeah.

Ranette Oliver (06:39.874)
Yep.

Michael Stansbury (06:48.671)
And so, the other thing you talked about too is like, hey, can make, we can make these decisions really. We’re not just hard money lenders. We know the business. And so being in real estate, being able to do comps and knowing if it’s a good deal or not, you’re educating your, the buyer or the flipper because you’re like, hey, we can’t lend on this thing because it’s 95 % of ARV and you know, can’t, you gotta do better on your buy-in.

Ranette Oliver (07:06.164)
are over. Yeah. Yeah.

Ranette Oliver (07:17.067)
And they appreciate, they seem to really appreciate it. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (07:18.583)
So those are some of the … Yeah, I can imagine. And then I’m always curious on this end, and again, you don’t have to share all the secret sauces, but on the back end of all your loans, so you’re not using bank arbitrage, using other people’s money. Let’s say that I had $10 million and I wanted to put it in this 9 % fund, but …

Is there, know, so do I get 9 % when I put it in? Because, let’s say that you guys don’t have any deals at this moment, you know, is that a hiccup or how does that look for you? How do you adjudicate that?

Ranette Oliver (07:59.116)
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a great question. So we ask that you give us a month or less usually to put the money to work. Typically, if one day we’re like with a surplus of capital, the next day we’re out. Like it happens really quick. Mike, the owner of our company, he’ll be like, okay, we just had a few payoffs. We’ve got, you know, $8 million. And I’m like, it’s coming a couple of days later, it’s out. And then he’s like,

play we’re out of cash and like raise more, you know, we got more deals and he always does, know, he always does, he always comes through. now it usually is, usually it’s very quick that we get that money working within a week or so. But once, once we get the money deployed that you’ve deposited, there’s, you’re always getting that 9 % even if the funds aren’t deployed. So even if we’re sitting on a, you know, a bunch of cash.

we’re not making any money, our investors are, which is why I have a job. I make sure that that cash is out. And something to note, we’re not brokering anything. And that’s really, really huge. And that’s another reason that a lot of these private money lenders can’t close on time is because they’ll give terms. They’ll do their quote unquote due diligence, or at least a portion of it. And then they’ll think, yeah, sure, I’ll find somebody to take this loan.

Michael Stansbury (09:03.237)
Okay. Right.

Michael Stansbury (09:10.341)
Right.

Michael Stansbury (09:24.043)
a portion of it.

Ranette Oliver (09:27.782)
you know, pitching it to their investors and they can’t find a broker to do it. We just, we know our parameters and what, what is going to be a fit for our investors. We don’t need to run it by them. So when we say these are your terms, those are the actual terms and we’re not, we’re not brokering it. So that’s super helpful. I’ve come to find.

Michael Stansbury (09:28.443)
and they’re pitching it to their investors and they can’t find a broker to do it.

and what’s gonna be a fit for our investors, we don’t need to run it by them. So when you say these are your terms, those are the actual terms and we’re at more than a fit. We’re helpful at kind of finding. Yeah, so it’s a beautiful thing. I liken it to, so I’ve been fixing flipping since 2000.

and I have what they call friendly money. And I actually, it’s funny you give 9%, I give 9 % to my friendly money. And I’ve developed these relationships over time where if I have a deal, I just ask them, hey I need 100K for this deal and we close in two weeks. And they don’t, and here’s the thing, they trust me because again, like you said, we don’t do bad deals.

and we don’t lose our investors money because I have such a track record that there’s just high trust there and that shortens the amount of time that I have to spend. I don’t have to go out and raise money. Now, all fix and flippers start out that way. I certainly didn’t, but over time, you develop that skill set and obviously the owner has that skill set if he knows, hey, I’ve gotta go raise another $50 million. He can show people, hey, this is what I’ve done already.

Ranette Oliver (10:44.258)
Yeah.

Ranette Oliver (10:54.168)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (10:54.459)
Here’s what we’re doing now. So I was gonna ask about the, you guys make the arbitrage and then if you charge points, you make the points, but they get 9%, your folks get 9%. You guys also do lend on development and things of that nature. Is that different terms than fix and flips or how does that work for you?

Ranette Oliver (11:16.59)
Those are a little more opportunistic and it depends on the project scope of work and all of that. They’re underwritten a little bit different, you know, obviously, but yeah, single family, multifamily, commercial, ground up construction, new development. We fund a lot of car washes in Texas, Airport hangar, $7 million here in Phoenix, like all the Black Rock coffee, Dutch Bros coffee builds. filled.

Michael Stansbury (11:38.671)
Yeah.

Ranette Oliver (11:42.4)
refund the vertical and then they take us out with long-term financing. yeah, we kind of, our portfolio is kind of split between single-family and commercial.

Michael Stansbury (11:58.223)
I like it. So not just single family houses, but developments, commercial deals, things of that nature, you guys can fund if it makes sense.

Ranette Oliver (12:03.886)
Right.

Ranette Oliver (12:07.406)
Yeah, we just, fact, and we get really creative. mean, that is one of the things I love about not being bank leveraged and working for Mike. I mean, I learned something new every day, you even after 10 years, and he always has a new idea for something creative. So a couple years ago when the market was funky with refis and home equity loans, we started offering Mez. So we’ll do second position.

Michael Stansbury (12:10.393)
Yeah.

Ranette Oliver (12:33.006)
We’ll cross collateralize multiple properties, multiple county state lines to get 100 % financing. And then we just did a deal for…

Michael Stansbury (12:37.211)
on top of is auto care resupply to get ahead of present financing.

Michael Stansbury (12:52.079)
Okay, what happened? Is that me? no!

Michael Stansbury (13:04.41)
Ranette, let’s see.

Ranette Oliver (13:10.083)
Okay, you lost, I lost you. I’m back.

Sorry. Can hear me?

Michael Stansbury (13:16.473)
Hey girl, we got the power of editing. We’re good. We can edit that out.

Ranette Oliver (13:19.589)
Okay. We’re good. Great. was, I was, I don’t know what you heard me just say. creative financing. So we’re, we’re just funding a deal for, yeah, we’re just funding a deal for a creative ball, a ball player. mean, a professional ball player, least for the Mavericks. And we’re collateralizing two properties and in third position, we’re collateralizing his Bitcoin.

Michael Stansbury (13:23.131)
So.

Michael Stansbury (13:31.939)
Yeah, yeah, we’re talking about that.

Ranette Oliver (13:49.917)
new for us, but we found an attorney that’ll do it.

Michael Stansbury (13:52.006)
okay, so you’re using, that’s interesting. So you’re using Bitcoin as an asset as well.

Ranette Oliver (13:58.479)
Yeah, we did for the first time. Yeah, we have, I mean, we obviously we have plenty of real estate to collateralize in first, you know, first position. One in first position, one in second position. And then in addition, we have additional collateral there because he’s getting a huge chunk of cash. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (14:06.124)
Right.

Michael Stansbury (14:12.123)
I love it. I love it. So I got a lot of we got a lot of people that are interested in and they we have a lot of guys in the real estate industry are starting to use Bitcoin as a treasury for their for their businesses. It’s an interesting way to do it. But that’s really cool that you guys are using that as an asset. That makes me it makes me happy actually because that’s what was predicted that would happen. And I love to see it being actually done in

in a real case scenario. Because that’s what we’ve been waiting for. Okay, how are we gonna use this as something that can actually help accelerate the amount of assets that we can create or have. So that’s cool. Yeah, okay, so tell me a little bit about. Yeah, well tell me about Ranette offline. So you said you had a couple kids. What’s your life look like in Phoenix outside of real estate?

Ranette Oliver (14:43.781)
Yeah.

Ranette Oliver (14:55.023)
Yeah, yeah, it’s a

Ranette Oliver (15:05.301)
gosh. boy. boy. Are you ready? Okay. I was married for 24 years to my high school sweetheart. He passed away in September, but we have five kids and they’re all grown.

Michael Stansbury (15:13.615)
Give it to me.

Michael Stansbury (15:25.902)
How many kids?

Ranette Oliver (15:27.067)
Five. And they’re all grown. Yeah, so our oldest three daughters are 25, 23, 22. Each one of them are married. Each one of them have a baby and two are pregnant again. So I’m a nonny. And that’s exciting. That’s way better than motherhood, even though I love being a mom, but this is a whole nother level. So, and then my…

Michael Stansbury (15:30.276)
Okay, awesome.

Michael Stansbury (15:50.263)
Right. Yeah, so you had, you had five?

Ranette Oliver (15:57.881)
I have five, so my youngest two are boys. They still live at home, 20 and 18. He just graduated from high school, my baby. Like just the other day. So, yeah, so that’s, yeah.

Michael Stansbury (16:08.432)
Awesome. I love it. That’s awesome. well you know, yeah we just, I’m in the four kid club, not in the five, and we had one that just got married off this weekend, which was super cool. mean, that’s just awesome. yeah, and so Phoenix is home, always been home.

Ranette Oliver (16:19.961)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Congrats. That’s exciting. Yeah, I love it.

Ranette Oliver (16:33.243)
No, I was born in San Diego at the Naval Hospital and then moved to the central coast of California when I was a couple of years old. And I grew up there, to high school there, met my husband there, married, had our first three daughters in California and then moved to Arizona about 22 years ago.

Ranette Oliver (17:00.335)
I know.

Michael Stansbury (17:00.483)
Okay, so the question I have for you is are any of the kids interested? Are they in real estate or are they say hey you know that’s mom’s thing?

Ranette Oliver (17:08.955)
They have, so two of my daughters have interned, you know, when they were in high school at the company. But they’re all my, two of my daughters are in the medical field. One of them is veterinary. And so it just hasn’t happened. My son is in automotive. He works for Porsche. And not yet. My 20 year old son often asks me, how do I get into that? How do I come work for you?

Michael Stansbury (17:28.571)
No, it’s just…

Ranette Oliver (17:39.397)
but I’m picky. We’ll get there. We’ll get there. I love helping people achieve their dreams through real estate. So if they’re open to it, I’m open to it.

Michael Stansbury (17:41.691)
You

Michael Stansbury (17:52.654)
Yeah. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s neat. They see you do it and obviously they’re, they, they saw your work ethic and they applied it in other areas. But yeah, if they apply it in real, I love, I love doing that. I love my kid. I my oldest son works with me and I love it when my older kids are interested in it in some capacity. It just makes me happy that in entrepreneurship or whatever their endeavor is. Um,

Ranette Oliver (18:17.861)
Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (18:19.395)
Well, Ranette, where can people find out more about your specific, at belending and you on the internet, where can they find you at?

Ranette Oliver (18:28.313)
Okay. So I’m on, we’re on Instagram, BELending. Our website is BELending.com. But honestly, just my cell phone or my email address. Typically the easiest to reach me. have like, yeah, Facebook and Instagram messages from people and I’m like, I forgot to respond. So I’m trying to get better at it, but yeah, just directly emailing me or.

Michael Stansbury (18:45.368)
is the best.

Ranette Oliver (18:57.557)
know, texting me is great.

Michael Stansbury (19:02.297)
Yeah, that’s awesome. So, Lending, and we’ll put all the information, folks, in the show notes below. But, Ranette, anything else that people need to know about you and BE Lending before we get off the podcast?

Ranette Oliver (19:15.931)
Just that, mean, our process, one thing we didn’t touch on is how our process works. We’re pretty quick, you know, about the way that we operate. So if someone’s making offers on properties and they need a proof of funds, just text me, I can get it to them right away. Once they lock the contract up, I just need a copy of that pictures and then their budget and ARV and within 24 to 48 hours, we can finalize terms. So they can make a decision if it’s a wholesale deal and they need same day numbers.

Michael Stansbury (19:33.285)
Yeah.

Ranette Oliver (19:45.827)
We can accommodate, you just need to know about it. And it’s really, it’s the second set of eyes on their deal, you know, and we just want to come alongside them. If it’s a win for them, it’s a win for us and we want it to be a win for everybody. So yeah, and it’s really quick. So we funded auction here. Like I said, our quickest close is four hours. So, you know, if we need to close extremely quick to get a deal for somebody, we can do that.

Michael Stansbury (19:49.403)
you

and set eyes on their deal, you know, and we just want to come alongside them. If it’s a win for them, it’s a win for us, and we want it to be a win for everybody. So, yeah, and it’s really quite simple. We found an option here, like I said, it was close to four hours, so if we need do something extremely quick to get a for somebody, we can do that.

Awesome, so speed and convenience and then personal relationship. Folks, check out Ranette and Belending. All her information will be down below. Thank you for being part of the Real Estate Pros podcast. Folks, thanks for watching. Remember to like and subscribe. And for more information about Belending, just check out the show notes below. Thanks everybody. We’ll see you soon at the next time on the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Ranette Oliver (20:40.069)
Thanks, Michael.

Ranette Oliver (20:44.462)
Yeah

Ranette Oliver (20:49.377)
Yeah, but you pause for a second. Now there you are.