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Fix & Flip to $55M Deals: How Smart Investors Get Funded in Any Market

By November 7, 2025Real Estate Pros Show

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Erika speaks with Michael Martin and Jennifer Toledo from National Funding Partner about innovative financing solutions in the real estate sector. They discuss their journey in the lending space, unique loan scenarios, risk assessment, maintaining quality in their services, and strategies for scaling with high net worth investors. The conversation emphasizes the importance of personal attention and transparency in the lending process, as well as the potential for creative financing to help clients achieve their goals.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Jennifer Toledo (00:00)
    you know, I have programs for people that have done. ⁓

    you know, four or five fix and flips under their their belt already. ⁓ And we can put them in a loan that has ⁓ no money down for the for the ⁓ purchase, no money down towards the rehab. And and we can even get the closing costs financed. And here’s the kicker. No monthly payments. We can do four of those at a time for an investor is no better way to scale than with somebody else’s money when you don’t have to put up a bunch of cash to do it.

    Erika (02:04)
    Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Erika. Today I’m excited to be chatting with Michael Martin and Jennifer Toledo of National Funding Partner. They have been funding some of the biggest deals across the country for over a decade. Michael, Jennifer, welcome to the show.

    Michael (02:25)
    Thank you very much for having us.

    Jennifer Toledo (02:27)
    Thanks Erika.

    Erika (02:29)
    I think our listeners are going to walk away knowing exactly how to get their deals funded faster by understanding the lending space like never before. So let’s dive in. First off, for anyone who hasn’t crossed paths with you two yet, can you share what was the story behind National Funding Partner?

    Michael (02:50)
    Well, originally started national. I had retired just for a little bit and then I got bored.

    Michael (02:55)
    So I started off, I’ve been in this business for a long time. I retired for a little bit because I kind of got burned out. And I decided when I got back into it, I want to do just small business loans. Five, six, seven, eight deals a month. I was fine with that. I kind of didn’t want to give up my retirement status and my freedom. And as I was doing it, Jennifer had actually given me a call

    Michael (03:18)
    and we worked on a couple of small business deals, but as we got into it more, all of a sudden, a buddy of mine sent me a referral of a stockbroker that had ultra wealthy clients that were looking for huge commercial deals. So it’s like, ⁓ okay, I’ve got a lender for that. So I called out all my old lenders. Jennifer has lenders or investors. We found a particular one investor that we really liked and we decided to go full bore with it. And now I’m just really enjoying.

    the game again you know i don’t do it for the money just for the money to do it because i enjoy helping people get alone get their business going get their commercial deal done when everybody else no i want to be able to say yes and i want to give them favorable terms we always try to get at least three options for them so that they can determine ⁓ which way they want to go it’s as simple as that i think that was on the same page

    Jennifer Toledo (04:10)
    Yep, except I just want to mention we do offer investment loans for people that do fix and flips and ground up constructions one at a time. We can do loans as little as $150,000 and up.

    Erika (04:23)
    That’s really cool that you have such versatility with the kind of loans that you can work with. Michael, you were talking earlier about some thinking outside the box when it comes to doing some of these deals. Can you give some examples where you’ve been really able to do that?

    Michael (04:36)
    Yeah.

    Well, for example, we just got a deal in where they wanted to do a $55 million plant ⁓ job. Most lenders wouldn’t touch it because they don’t really know about that particular bond, but the investors that I really enjoy work with bonds all the time. That’s basically how they ⁓ do their funding from overseas. So they were very familiar with this German bond, and now we’re able to move forward with ⁓ this company. Also, this company is a big referral service.

    They’re one of the biggest mortgage companies in the nation and they’ve been getting a lot of requests for commercial. Now they don’t know a thing about commercial so they reached out to us and we are able to white label their business. They can close in their name, they can close in their LOI, they can close on their HUD and my investor will be the servicing agent. So they will collect all the payments, they will do whatever it is that from behind the scenes that

    The mortgage company does not have to do. And they were ecstatic about that type of thing. So I had another client that wanted to do a pickleball, $10 million. And Jennifer looked over again. She did some research and said, hey, you don’t have enough money in the game. You need to have more revenue services. He wanted to put up a pickleball, court 20 of them, like 100 spaces for cars and one restaurant. Jennifer came back and said, you need $18 million. You need bigger operating.

    ⁓ capital in your in your bank account and here here’s some seven or eight different revenues a dog park a driving range you know three restaurants instead of one that offer different types of cruisines you know just that type of thing she listed about eight and then she said hey why don’t you go ahead and franchise this we’ll make it so we’ll put this deal together so it’s franchisable and he just loved it absolutely loved it so that’s just some of the stuff that that we do that we just love putting together something that sounds good to the customer but then

    we come back with something better and they’re like, whoa, I never even thought that big. So it’s all good.

    Jennifer Toledo (06:46)
    I’d also like to throw out there a situation that I had recently that was a rather unique thing. A lot of times commercial investors, for instance, this gentleman that I’m working with right now has an 18 unit Airbnb that he’s putting together on an island somewhere. I won’t say where, but he’s putting that together and they wanted to come in and put down the typical 25 to 30%. I got them a loan that was only 20 % down.

    However, ⁓ and it’s a lot of money to put down because this is a several million dollar loan. ⁓ I got them into a rehab loan instead.

    which is a hundred percent financing. So they were able to get into the property with nothing for the purchase price, nothing towards the very small rehab. think we did a rehab for around $30,000, which is peanuts in comparison to this property. But it was an idea just to get them into that type of loan in the first place. Then when they slide out of this loan, they’ll get 80 % of the appraised value, not just 80 % of the purchase price. So the amount of money that they had to come up with is about $400,000.

    less to slide into this property even with having to do two closings and having this $30,000 of ⁓ rehab that they really don’t need but ⁓ because it was only built a year ago so they’re going to do new hand railings and put in some other ⁓ nice curb appeal type things for the the property that you know isn’t necessarily a necessity but just dresses it up a little bit but they’re literally keeping an extra $400,000 in their pocket just by doing a little bit of creative finding.

    and getting them in there in a different way than what they had anticipated. And they’re just thrilled about it.

    Erika (08:34)
    That’s really exciting, Jennifer. For our listeners who, you whether they need a small loan or a big loan, but their situation is a little tricky for whatever reason, what do you want our listeners to know?

    Michael (08:39)
    Thank

    that we will go to the different investors that we have, explain the situation because sometimes a loan can be made not just because of the credit, the low credit scores, which we do have investors that will go down to even 400. I’ve even got a lender that will, or an investor that will do no income verification. As long as you have equity in a non-owner occupied or commercial ⁓ building, we can get you up to 55 % and close within five days.

    and use your appraisal, know, just things like that. So we do try to reach out to our investors if there’s something a little different because they want to look at the investor themselves and what they’ve done in the past and, you know, all that good stuff, other than just a credit report. So, but if we can’t and we don’t have it, we will be right up in front on it. I’m sorry, we just can’t do it. We’ve tried everything and get back to them within 72 hours, whether or not there’s a possibility or we don’t want to waste your time.

    Jennifer Toledo (09:52)
    I’d like to add to that that the story does matter. You your past experience, what you’ve done before, even if things aren’t necessarily

    right now. ⁓ You know, Michael and I…

    getting all the information that’s possible. If people are up transparent with us and are honest with us and tell us the whole story and everything we need to know, most of the time, Michael and I can reiterate the situation in full to the potential investor. And a lot of times that makes all the difference in the world. If we are equipped with what we need to go into a situation to get them their financing because they’ve been transparent with us, that helps us do our job better.

    Erika (10:35)
    Absolutely, that transparency is important. Michael and Jennifer, one thing that I want to talk about today is how you’re operating nationwide, which is, you know, rare for a private lender. How do you underwrite risk across those different markets without having boots on the ground everywhere? Is there tech, data or systems that help with that?

    Jennifer Toledo (10:58)
    Absolutely.

    Michael (10:59)
    that’s a good idea

    that i’d like you did with your here with the guy down in ⁓ florida with the ⁓ development that was in a depressed area and he didn’t realize that he was

    Jennifer Toledo (11:07)
    So

    yeah, he’s actually in Port Arthur, Texas, where he is in a declining market. And it’s about a matter of doing research. And of course, we rely on ⁓

    you know, appraisers to go out to the property and evaluate the property and the area, you know, for several different things. Sometimes it’s for the market rent and how it’s performing based upon the ⁓ amount of leases that a particular place has, or even a small, you know, even a triplex, for instance, if it’s fully leased out ⁓ is more valuable ⁓ when it’s fully leased than it is being empty, you know, just for a smaller example, ⁓ or versus a ⁓ big apartment complex or a

    development, ⁓ know, gated community development. ⁓ All those factors, you know, the area, what’s up and coming, what else is being built in the area, ⁓ you know, other developments, know, amenities for people to get to easily. ⁓

    those things all factor into the value of the home. ⁓ And of course, as far as, of course, know good schools, crime, all that sort of thing will factor into it. But we rely basically on the appraiser, who is usually a local person, to go down and evaluate for us. And of course, we have the luxury of the internet these past 30 years. So we can dive into pretty much any area and assess the risk situation or the comings and goings of the community.

    pretty easily nowadays, so it’s not too hard to do.

    Erika (12:43)
    Yeah, yeah, technology really has a change thing, things here. So as I’m sure both of you know, every lender has a deal that, know, maybe almost broke them. Can you share one of those moments on your journey? What went wrong and what you learned from it?

    Michael (13:03)
    I haven’t personally had that problem only because, like Jennifer said, we do our due diligence, we make sure that we are actually the underwriting team so that when we send a complete file and we send a complete file into our investors, they can say, wow, this is a complete file. And if we feel by knowing their criteria that we know that this has a 99.9 % chance of being funded, unless there was something in that file that we didn’t aware of.

    While they did their due diligence, we know that if we send it to you, it’s going to get funded. So we don’t have that much problems like maybe other lenders that all of a sudden the broker didn’t send in complete, didn’t do their due diligence beforehand. They just said, oh, let me go ahead and pass this off. Where we actually sit on the file, we do our due diligence, we look it up so that when we send it in, we want to send the investor a complete good file so they can look at it go, yes.

    We want this deal. Thank you for presenting it the way that you have it done. So that’s our goal is we’re not just the middle people. We will actually analyze your situation to make sure that we put it in the best light for the investor. We package it so it’s in front of the lender with their best foot forward. And we’re very clear with that when we tell the investor that. We’ve had to do it several times with clients.

    because what they presented was not going to get funded. So we had to have them change numbers, locations, write documentation, and things. really appreciated Jennifer even had to build a pitch deck for someone. That took her 16 hours. And we didn’t charge the customer. So that’s a lot of money. She did it over a week. Labor day weekend, I believe. Wasn’t it, Jennifer? Yeah.

    Jennifer Toledo (14:47)
    Yeah, it sure was. It just recently.

    Michael (14:51)
    But we wanted to make sure the client was going to get funded because he had spent a lot of money on the land and he really needed to get this deal funded.

    Erika (14:59)
    Yeah, wow, that is an amazing track record with the business growing and scaling. How have you maintained that quality and that consistency with your due diligence?

    Jennifer Toledo (15:14)
    Well, think I’m sorry, Michael, go ahead.

    Michael (15:14)
    lot of hard work.

    Go ahead.

    Jennifer Toledo (15:19)
    I think what helps us maintain the quality is personal attention. ⁓ While Michael has hired other loan officers to come on for different aspects of the business, ⁓ giving our personal attention to the hard money and the commercial sector. ⁓

    really pays off. know, it’s a lot of work. I know most of the time I’m not done working until 10, 11 o’clock at night, you know, and I’m starting at nine o’clock in the morning, but I don’t mind. I love what I do. I enjoy what I do.

    Michael (15:47)
    Mm-hmm.

    Jennifer Toledo (15:55)
    I don’t know, it’s just, I guess to be doing this for a living, it’s part of who you are. It’s part of your persona, it’s part of your makeup. You either are it or you’re not it. You’re not going to work from nine to five and you stop being it at five o’clock when you punch your ticket. In this industry, ⁓ pretty much with any industry that has to do with lending or high-end sales, ⁓ you’re pretty much it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

    you’re born with the it factor. It comes built in and either you have it or you don’t have it. And either you’re somebody that’s gonna work till 10 o’clock at night not minded at all, or you’re somebody who’s super mad and wanted to go home five hours ago and punch your ticket. So I think the personal attention that we pay, the fact that it doesn’t matter if it’s nine o’clock at night or nine o’clock in the morning, we’re available, know, 90, 95 % of the time.

    and the fact that we are very diligent about getting back to people and staying in contact and keeping them updated makes a big difference. It really does make a big difference.

    Erika (17:06)
    Michael, did you want to add to that?

    Michael (17:07)
    I just going to say, Jennifer and I are on the same page. We want to make a deal happen. We love connecting people and making deals and see how can we get this deal funded. What can we do over our experience to say we’ll get this thing funded because we like it personally and we like the client because they may be desperate to get funding. They’ve been through everybody else with no, no, no, but I want to, I even sent over a couple of deals where this guy

    didn’t have enough equity in his home and he had ⁓ poor credit history and I found him somebody and I told the investor I don’t want anything out of it just get this guy funded I don’t care about a referral fee just get this guy funded and you and I are good and so sometimes you just give up your commission or your pay just to get somebody some help that really needs it that’s really why we’re in this business

    Erika (17:59)
    Yeah, wow. I love your your dedication, Michael. Now, I know a lot of listeners here are either raising their first private round or they’re trying to scale. When it comes to building relationships with high net worth investors, what’s made the biggest difference for you to is it events, content, referrals, what’s move the needle for you?

    Michael (18:22)
    It’s been referrals. It’s been private referrals to be honest with you. We are actually for the first time trying an email campaign of 15,000 leads going out that have already been scrubbed and people have actually asked in it. So we’re going to try that route. But as of right now,

    we’ve got

    $155 million in the pipeline. And we’ve got just from our biggest referral source, what do we get? new deals, Jennifer? Five?

    Jennifer Toledo (18:49)
    ⁓ five, six,

    seven, eight. Eight, yeah.

    Michael (18:51)
    Okay, eight deals. ⁓

    You know, we got one that’s, and they’re all high-end ⁓

    deals. So, you do? What is that, two million?

    Jennifer Toledo (18:59)
    I got a couple of small ones. Yeah. Yeah.

    No, no, got one that’s 249,000. But you know that that deals just as important to us as the big ones are, you know, as far as somebody ⁓ as far as scaling like you had you had asked, ⁓

    Michael (19:07)
    There you go, that’s right.

    Absolutely, absolutely.

    Jennifer Toledo (19:17)
    you know, I have programs for people that have done. ⁓

    you know, four or five fix and flips under their their belt already. ⁓ And we can put them in a loan that has ⁓ no money down for the for the ⁓ purchase, no money down towards the rehab. And and we can even get the closing costs financed. And here’s the kicker. No monthly payments. We can do four of those at a time for an investor is no better way to scale than with somebody else’s money when you don’t have to put up a bunch of cash to do it.

    And you can get into four deals

    that you never would have had before. The loans, yep, they’re a little bit more expensive. The fees are a little bit higher, they sure are, but who cares? If you’re doing four deals and let’s say you’re making 50 grand a piece instead of 60 grand a piece, mind you, you never would have had them in the first place, so you’re making an extra $200,000, you know, do you care that the loan was a little bit more expensive or that the fees were a little bit higher and that you had no monthly payments to worry about? I mean, just think about if you had to make four payments on four different

    properties while you’re trying to get everything done. And let’s say that’s 10, 12 grand a

    Well, you don’t even have to come up with that. It sure makes it easy to scale and scale quickly if you get into the program. A lot of people can’t get over the fact that it’s 11 % instead of 9.99 or that you end up paying an extra point or a point and a half. But they’re not looking at the bigger picture. They’re not looking at the fact that you have an opportunity to make $200,000 more that you never would have

    made

    it all because you didn’t have enough money to get into four closing costs, four 20 % or 10 % down payments on the purchase price, and four monthly payments. You didn’t have the cash to do that. And even if you did, why wouldn’t you do four other projects and then do four of these and make $400,000 that year? Right? Now that’s how you scale. That’s true scaling.

    Michael (21:15)
    And the other thing we’ve got, have an investor that’ll do around the world investing. We’re looking at one right now, 300 million in Brazil. ⁓ Resort and a mall on the same piece of land that he bought for $100 million. So there’s only five countries, basically they will not go in. the Iraq, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, but everything else ⁓ we’re open to. So we’ve got the flexibility if you have, you’re an American investor that wants to

    move outside the US? Absolutely. Let’s take a look at it.

    Erika (21:48)
    Wow, wow, there are so many possibilities with what you have to offer. And I also love the razor sharp focus for how can we help our investors succeed? How can we give them the best deal?

    Michael (22:02)
    Absolutely.

    Absolutely.

    Erika (22:07)
    That’s awesome. Well, for our listeners today, if they they want to connect, reach out, you know, maybe they need some lending help. What’s the best way for them to reach you?

    Michael (22:20)
    They can either reach us, Jennifer is going to give her number, my number is 1-888-71-NATIONAL is the easiest way it will come on in. And Jennifer, they reach you personally. They will reach a little directory as well that when they press Jennifer number 2, it will also connect to Jennifer’s line. But if Jennifer, you want to give your information, your direct line.

    Jennifer Toledo (22:42)
    My contact

    phone number is 774-441-2600 and you can reach me from 9am to 9pm Eastern Standard Time.

    Michael (22:56)
    Same thing with myself. So Jennifer really specializes in the hard money, fix and flips and things like that where I kind of will go over together with other purchases of more your conventional type loans.

    Erika (23:13)
    Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, again, Michael and Jennifer, appreciate both of you being here and sharing all your expertise. We need more people in this space who are doing things the right way, like you do.

    Michael (23:25)
    We appreciate that.

    Erika (23:28)
    For our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations lined up with experts

    like Michael and Jennifer who are out there building fantastic businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.

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