How Bridge Loans Save Real Estate Deals with Eric Mirman

Eric Mirman (00:00)
I was told as a young kid, I’m 53 now, 30 years ago, do what you did to get there. And that’s just a philosophy we try to stick by. On top of that, like I said, there is such a demand for the service that we’re providing. And it’s to people under serious duress. It’s difficult if someone were to come to me and say, I have this great property and

Manhattan and it’s worth 2 million and I need a quick half a million dollar bridge loan or a million dollar bridge loan or I’m going to lose something I’ve worked my entire life to accumulate and the only reason it’s in a state of the rest is because certain things happen. Affected their credit, affected their cash flow, whatever the case is, they need our help. We want to help them and saying no, sorry, I’m illiquid today to me is difficult. I don’t sleep at night that way.

Scott Bursey (02:22)
Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Scott Bursey And today I’m joined by someone I’ve really been looking forward to chatting with, Eric Mirman who’s been making serious moves in the residential real estate space. Eric has built his reputation on precision, data-driven strategy, and a client-first philosophy that actually delivers. He’s a strategist, a top tier negotiator, and a true New York closer. Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric Mirman (02:47)
Hey Scott, thank you for the generous introduction.

Scott Bursey (02:49)
our pleasure. think our audience is really going to take something away from the way you’ve mastered the expansion team model to bring a high performance systematic approach to the New York suburbs. Eric, let’s dive in, shall we?

So first off, for those who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version. What’s your main focus recently?

Eric Mirman (03:09)
Our main focus is on funding bridge loans related to real estate transactions. They’re structured as mortgages, as in any real estate purchase. And they are short-term. We have a variety of clients and they are meant to be a solution, not a bandaid, but to get someone from point A to point B where they can

afterwards replace us with a more traditional financing that is longer term and more typical of long term market rates.

Scott Bursey (03:44)
And what markets are you operating in?

Eric Mirman (04:35)
We’re mostly Northeast, so there are markets where we can access quickly if we need to, and we have a pretty good understanding of the values. But we can do all of East Coast, theoretically we can do the entire country, but we focus on the East Coast. We’ve done transactions in ⁓ North Carolina and Florida, a bunch in Florida, but mostly New York, New Jersey, Connecticut.

Scott Bursey (04:59)
What caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to bridge the gap between high-level systems and human-centric service. That’s not easy, especially in this climate. What’s been the key to keeping your machine running smoothly?

Eric Mirman (05:15)
relationships, being true to them. We take care of our people, whether it’s a client or it’s a source of business that is referring that client to us in the first place. But we’re human, we’re just regular people, we’re not looking to get rich on any one transaction. And we’re not looking to…

really grab and hog everything to ourselves. When someone brings us a transaction, we try to get it done. When that transaction is due to be paid off, we always reach out to that same source and say, you have an opportunity now to close this out and to earn again on the backend. And we make that a rule that we always stick by on all of our business.

Scott Bursey (05:59)
And a great rule, a great rule at that. Now every operator I know has a moment where things got real. Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time that you had to pivot fast. You mind sharing one of those moments with us?

Eric Mirman (06:13)
happened last week where we were doing a financing as a foreclosure bailout for a gentleman who has multiple assets in Connecticut, rental properties. long story short, he was under the gun time of the essence, so to speak, where his properties was going to be sold at auction last Friday. And we were going through our process, which incorporated some additional

credit that we put alongside our funds so we can do more transactions and larger transactions and the timeline, the state of Connecticut was not going to give him the time to complete this financing to pay off the debt that caused it to go into foreclosure. So we had to pivot quickly in a day and a half, scrap the plan of using our credit, funded ourselves, pull a half a million dollars in.

Get all the loan docs structured, got it closed and saved him literally hours away from having his property auctioned.

Scott Bursey (07:48)
It’s incredible how the moments like that, that feel like a disaster in real time, often become the foundation for the next 10 years of growth. And perhaps this will be a pivot point for you. And honestly, that’s the filter right there.

That’s what weeds out the dabblers from and defines people that have been in the business and are going to stay in the business long term. Let me ask you this, what are you most focused on solving or scaling next?

Eric Mirman (08:18)
Raising capital. We use all friends, family, personal funds, and we can couple that with a little bit of credit. However, it’s a demand for what we do. People get to know us, they work with us, they start to refer other executives or business owners and operators that could use assistance from us, as opposed to some of the typical

hard money private investors they deal with who are really true loan sharks and they are looking for your failure and hoping for it so they can charge your default rates best case scenario ⁓ they can charge the full rates and take your property and liquidate it. There’s a high demand for what we do it’s a very niche market. ⁓ We have many people we want to help and work with.

We’re just limited by funds because again, it’s all friends and family.

Scott Bursey (09:10)
That’s big and that next move is where the leverage lives. It can either perfect your operations or detonate your workflow depending on the strategy that you employ, Interested to know, how do you maintain your edge when things are going well? It’s easy to grind when you’re broke, but when you’re hungry.

Eric Mirman (09:33)
I was told as a young kid, I’m 53 now, 30 years ago, do what you did to get there. And that’s just a philosophy we try to stick by. On top of that, like I said, there is such a demand for the service that we’re providing. And it’s to people under serious duress. It’s difficult if someone were to come to me and say, I have this great property and

Manhattan and it’s worth 2 million and I need a quick half a million dollar bridge loan or a million dollar bridge loan or I’m going to lose something I’ve worked my entire life to accumulate and the only reason it’s in a state of the rest is because certain things happen. Affected their credit, affected their cash flow, whatever the case is, they need our help. We want to help them and saying no, sorry, I’m illiquid today to me is difficult. I don’t sleep at night that way.

It’s like being a doctor and saying sorry. I don’t accept your insurance. I’m gonna watch you die. I Couldn’t do that

Scott Bursey (10:29)
Well said.

Well, well said. Now I know a lot of our audiences either earlier in their journey or looking to level up in some fashion. And I think they benefit from hearing this from you. When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

Eric Mirman (10:46)
No sales scripts. When I started out in finance 30 years ago, it’s one of the first things I had handed to me was a sales script. And I understood the reasoning behind it. So a person with no education and no training can sound professional, but people who know me know I’ll say some things sometimes that they would know could not possibly be scripted because it’s so off the wall, but it’s so honest. It’s myself. I speak my mind.

for better or for worse. And my relationships know that. And as I said to you prior to being alive, I ⁓ don’t hold people hostage. If I can help you, I will help you without a doubt. If I cannot, I will say, I wish I could help you, but I can’t participate right now. Perhaps you may want to reach out to A, B, and C. This may be more in their wheelhouse.

Scott Bursey (11:36)
And that brutal transparency I think is so critical. And that hits home. In an industry that is so transactional, being the person who actually shows up when there isn’t a deal on the table is what creates that competitive edge around your business. It’s that unsexy consistency, if you will, that most people aren’t willing to do.

Let me ask you this, what does your tech stack look like right now? Is there one piece of software or perhaps AI that has actually moved the needle for your team recently?

Eric Mirman (12:51)
We use a platform that is a loan management or specifically a mortgage management platform. And whereas a couple of years ago when I’m sending you a monthly interest payment, meaning I’m sending to one of our loan participants who provided funds for a mortgage, I’m sending them an email, hey Scott, just to let you know, expect to see a direct deposit or a wire, hit your account in the next two days for your interest from property.

ABC Main Street. Now we have something that is really sophisticated, doesn’t only track everything, but you can log on as one of our participants and see your entire portfolio as far as the loans you are involved with, what your return is, what your projected cash flow should be for the year. And it’s an automated system where if I send you an electronic deposit for your portion of a loan’s monthly interest,

you will get an automated email that will say you received this amount of funds deposited on this day for this particular loan that you are participating in. And it’s really made a lot of our investors comfortable that they can have access to their portfolio on that kind of a level.

Scott Bursey (14:01)
That’s awesome and I can imagine it does make them feel more at ease. Alright, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to contact you?

Eric Mirman (14:14)
They can call our main number. They can email me directly if they want to. I can provide you with both if you want me to do that now live. I can.

Scott Bursey (14:23)
Sure.

Eric Mirman (14:23)
Main number is 833-735-3633 and email address is my first initial and last name, E-M-I-R-M-A-N at BlueHorizonFunding.com.

Scott Bursey (14:40)
Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story, your transparency and your perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing it the right way. Thanks again for being here.

Eric Mirman (14:51)
Thank you, Scott. Appreciate it.

Scott Bursey (14:52)
And for those of you tuning in, if you got value from us, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Eric, who are out there building real businesses. See you in the next episode, everybody.