How Investors Fund Deals Fast: Fix & Flip, BRRRR, and DSCR Loans w/ Max Chera (Express Capital Financing)

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Max shares insights on the importance of making quick decisions in financial matters, particularly regarding loans. He emphasizes that not every loan is meant to be and that learning from experiences, both positive and negative, is crucial for personal and financial growth.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Max Chera’s Website
    • Max Chera on Facebook
    • Max Chera on Instagram
    • Max Chera on LinkedIn
    • Max Chera’s Phone Number: (718) 285-0806
    • Max Chera’s Email: [email protected]

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Max (00:00)
  taking that also into account and seeing how we can leverage certain technologies to assist and help our loan officers do more work and

  be more attentive to their deals and be able to be more involved is a big is another big piece that we’re looking to take on and looking to bring on more broker business as well. Right. So we’re now looking to open up our products to a lot more variety of brokers, more sophisticated brokers that are able to submit and move along their own deals on a white label platform. So we’re actually doing a lot of the the structure build out right now and we’re hoping to release that in the next month or two, which we’re very excited for.

  Erika (02:09)
  Everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host Erika and today I’m excited to be joined by Max Chera. He is the managing partner and powerhouse at Express Capital Financing. Max, I’m so glad to have you on the show today.

  Max (02:25)
  Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

  Erika (02:27)
  So Max, you’ve built an impressive operation at Express Capital Financing. Can you share about your journey and what drives your passion in the lending world?

  Max (02:38)
  Yeah, mean, so before I got into the lending world, know, I definitely I spent a lot of time in the real estate space, walked by, worked my way up from doing rentals to sales to operating and managing an actual sales team.

  And eventually even helping investors with their purchases, their flips, their, ⁓ their burst strategies. And one thing that always came up was, you know, difficulty in financing, hopping through hoops. So it’s been a pleasure to say the least, to be able to really guide our borrowers properly, have a easy, seamless process for them that we’re able to help them navigate, walk them through it, step by step. But it’s been, it’s been a long journey in real estate. I’ll tell you that much.

  you

  Erika (03:21)
  Yeah, yeah, was there, was there a defining moment for you that you knew that this was going to be your lane instead of, you know, the other areas of real estate that you were working on?

  Max (03:33)
  It’s a really good question and looking back, I would say yes, there was a defining moment. was as soon as I got involved and I got through my first couple of files, I actually had a borrower that I was working with that I was, he was actually someone from my book of business from beforehand. I’ve actually helped them do a couple of deals together.

  And when I realized how I was able to go from helping that person do one deal, knowing very little to nothing about the financing part to now understanding how to properly leverage them, how to understand how they can actually diversify themselves a little bit more. And I went from doing one or two deals with that borrower a year to doing five to 10 deals with that same borrower. It really helped me understand how much more value I bring to the table in this space. helped me understand

  how much more valuable it is to have an understanding of the capital stack and how to properly, how to properly ⁓ situate it so that you can actually expand your real estate portfolio in a safe and risk-free way. Well, not risk-free, but mitigating the risks.

  Erika (04:38)
  Yes, mitigating the risk is always important. you you, your, your company is clearly a heavy hitter in, the lending space. Can you walk us through how you manage that volume and, know, give us kind of like the breakdown, like what kinds of deals are you typically helping with?

  Max (05:43)
  Sure, so to answer the first question, it all comes down to teams, right? So everybody is, we hold everybody responsible for their department and what they’re good at. I wouldn’t be here today if not for our processors, our underwriters, our salespeople, my brother, my father, everybody has their role. And we try to stay in that role and make everybody decision makers so that allows them to properly move things along without needing a lot of extra eyes on each file and so

  on ⁓

  The way I like to say it as long as your loan is below ten million dollars and it’s not for you to live in we could probably have a program for it

  Erika (06:49)
  Awesome, I love it. Going back to the volume that you guys do, how do you balance the speed and due diligence when you have that volume going on?

  Max (06:59)
  it comes down to creating that streamline process, right? So it’s.

  We’ve created number one, lot of technology that helps. We’ve created a custom technology that allows us to do our process in the same order that we’re already familiar with. And it comes to having somebody, each individual being responsible for their department. Right? So we have somebody that’s in charge of draws who’s tagged into the loan prior to the loan, even getting into underwriting to review the scope of works and make sure that there’s no, problems that they could see that would arise this way. They could make sure that, if there’s

  a question or something that they’re unsure of, we’re getting an answer now rather than six months into the project when they’re requesting a draw and now there’s a problem. It’s it streamlines that part of that process so much easier and faster. We like to get as much paperwork from the from the loan officer directly, right? The loan officer is already getting a soft pull of credit report. This way we see if there’s any problems. We like to do a lot of pre-qualifying so that once we put a deal into our processing queue, like it’s going to fly through

  because we’ve already checked through it. team, have a pricing desk that works directly also with our loan officers. So anytime a loan officer is ready to put a deal through, it’s already been looked at by an underwriter that asked any questions they have or made sure that it fits our current box and the deal is actually making sense from that perspective. And there’s a lot of times obviously where, you know, we got to get a little bit creative and make the deal work for repeat borrowers, so on and so forth.

  and we’re able to get those approved up front rather than waiting to the last minute and telling the borrower that either, you know, I’m so happy in the 12th hour we made it work or I’m so sorry in the 12th hour you’re gonna have to bring an extra X amount of dollars to closing. Like that’s a conversation we never want to have.

  Erika (08:43)
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That right there kind of transitions. what else I wanted to ask, which is, have there been any memorable or challenging deals that you’ve closed and what have you learned from it?

  Max (08:58)
  ⁓ There is a lot of challenging loans that I would say that I’ve closed and I would say a bulk of them were probably like if I had to take a period of time and say when were the most of them it was probably in 2020 when we were still funding loans but a lot of people were closed down or not funding at the moment and it was a little bit difficult because we had to be extremely careful we couldn’t kind of fly through the process like we used to we had to make sure that it really made sense but overall

  You asked me what was the biggest like…

  learning moment that I’ve had out of it or what did we gauge out of it is pretty much number one is if a loan is not meant to be, it’s not meant to be. And sometimes a quick no is better than an elongated no. And sometimes you can make it work if you just take a little bit of time to figure things out with the borrower and having conversation. A lot of times, for example, you find out the more you talk to the borrower, the more you start to realize different nuances to the deal or the relationship that they may have.

  which can add value or remove value from the deal and sometimes you really do have to have a full understanding of that. When we have a new loan officer, like a lot of the times the way I tell them is that I want you to make believe that I am on the conversation and you’re going to come to me and ask and I’m going to you’re going to have to answer all the questions that I’m going to ask you and are you going to have the answers to them? Right? Make sure that you’ve really understood the actual dynamic of the deal, why it’s being done. What are the

  motivations behind it? Is there any anything that you can use to help you? Did they give an extra large deposit? Was this a property they’ve owned previously and now they’re restructuring? All of these little details really play a big part into understanding how to properly structure that loan for it to be in the best situation for the borrower.

  Erika (11:17)
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I know that Max, that you guys have plans to scale your team and operations. Can you share what specific areas you’re looking to expand, whether it’s a team size, technology, new markets?

  Max (11:31)
  Yes. So actually it’s a little bit of the trifecta that you just put together. Right. So number one is we do we are looking to build up a stronger sales team, more people. Right. Because we’ve gotten to a point where and we’ll get to this in the technology portion in a moment. But there is a limited capacity of what a person is capable of doing and making sure that number one, we have more people in the background that’s able to a system so that they could do more loans and B is adding more people to the team that that could actually write

  more loans is a big part of our of our growth plan. Additionally, the technology portion is another big piece, especially with AI being out there. And, you know, I think that we’ve kind of experienced a little bit of it and people are understanding how it can be valuable. But we’re first still learning also how to properly implement it into our businesses. Right. So

  taking that also into account and seeing how we can leverage certain technologies to assist and help our loan officers do more work and

  be more attentive to their deals and be able to be more involved is a big is another big piece that we’re looking to take on and looking to bring on more broker business as well. Right. So we’re now looking to open up our products to a lot more variety of brokers, more sophisticated brokers that are able to submit and move along their own deals on a white label platform. So we’re actually doing a lot of the the structure build out right now and we’re hoping to release that in the next month or two, which

  we’re very excited

  And lastly, yes, market position and being brick and mortar in certain areas is another big piece of our growth plan, making sure that we have people that are gonna be in the big MSAs, that we do a lot of business in a ready so that they can get even deeper into the market and really build up more of a book of business in those market areas.

  Erika (13:17)
  Yes, yes, and having a brick and mortar store, it’s, you know, real estate relies, the industry, it’s all about relationships. So having that presence there, I’m sure we’ll enhance that. ⁓

  Max (13:28)
  It does. know, me and my father do a lot of networking, going to these expos and local events. And, you know, in the beginning of our career, I remember like we would fly out to Dallas to go to a little meetup event of 20 people or so.

  Looking back at it, I don’t regret any of it because it actually helped us get to where we were, but it was unsustainable to do that at the type of growth at the level that we’re at right now. I wouldn’t be able to be in every single local place and giving information and meeting with the people and shaking their hands and getting to actually know them. So a big piece to us is having more people in those areas where it’s much easier for them to go to their local meetups, you know, once or twice a week and be able to meet with the with the with the market. And I say meet with the market because it’s really

  You know real estate is so big and so small at the same time. There’s so many people of us There’s so many of us in the industry But yet it gets so small when you start talking to two or three people where we’re just one or two people removed from each other so Getting to meet with each of these investors and then you get their network out of it and so on so forth It creates an entire referral network. That’s much greater than any one of us

  Erika (15:15)
  Yeah, absolutely. That’s so true with the networking. When it comes to our listeners, do you have any networking advice for them? How should they determine if, you know, because there’s so many opportunities out there with networking, how can one best determine if a networking event or group is a good fit for them?

  Max (15:37)
  ⁓

  A lot of it is hit and miss and trial and error. I will say that I’ve been to a lot of events that I didn’t think that I had to be at while I was there. And maybe the second time around I went to it and all of sudden I was like, you know what? I actually met a person or two. So to me, networking is really, it’s a contact sport, right? So you got to do it often and a lot. You got to really put yourself out there. You got to go to a lot of different events. Now, one thing I would say is I try to really stay real estate specific. There’s a lot of different,

  types of mixers that you can go to out there where it’s like get funding for your business and you’ll meet with a lot of people that are in a lot of different verticals you know one person’s in the film industry one person’s in the media industry one person’s in the real estate industry and it’s like

  I want to be able to meet with as many people as I possibly can. Another quick tip that I like is I do always carry business cards with me, but I always try to make it like I don’t because I want to collect your card. I don’t want to give you my card. I want to be the person that’s able to reach out to you versus hoping that you’re going to reach out to me. So my entire goal when I’m networking is finding value that I could bring to that person outside of what I already do. Meaning, yeah, sure. If you’re looking for a lender and

  that’s

  the value that I bring great I’m so happy to have that conversation give me a card and I’ll reach out to you but a lot of times they may have somebody they’re working with already or they may not be looking for you directly right now so it’s a matter of understanding well what are you looking for I work with a lot of wholesalers wholesalers don’t lend money don’t borrow money from me but there’s still a relationship that we have that we have with each other because they have buyers that are looking to buy their property they want to make sure that they have a lender behind them that

  capable of closing the deal and maybe even could give it a preliminary look and tell it and tell them what we can get them on the leverage and what the deal actually looks like. Is it profitable? Could they maybe sell it for a little bit more than they were expecting? So those are the types of value adds that I try to bring to the table whether it’s a resource information or something and I say hey well look I would love to share that information with you if you give me your contact I’ll make sure that tomorrow when I’m in the office I could send over some some basic info that’ll help you through your through your

  problem.

  Erika (17:46)
  That’s so helpful. Well, Max, for our listeners here, if they want to connect, learn more about Express Capital Financing, or maybe they need help and need some lending, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

  Max (18:00)
  They can reach us, they can email us at info@expresscapitalfinancing and we’d be happy to get them set up with their own personal loan officer that’ll get to know them and truly understand their goals and make sure that each deal is the right one for them and structure the best possible loan for them. Or they could call us directly at (718)285-0806.

  Erika (18:17)
  Max, thank you so much for sharing your insights and expertise with us today.

  Max (18:21)
  It’s been a pleasure, Erika. Thank you again for having me.

  Erika (18:23)
  And 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 heavy hitters like Max who are out there building incredible real estate businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.