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Private vs Hard Money: DSCR, Bridge & Flip Loans | Temple View

By October 1, 2025Real Estate Pros Show

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Erika speaks with Doug Dolgoff, a seasoned professional in the lending and private capital space. Doug shares his journey from commercial real estate to his current role at Temple View Capital, highlighting the skills that have helped him transition smoothly. He discusses the unique approach of Temple View Capital, focusing on borrower flexibility and catering to both experienced and novice investors. Doug also addresses common misconceptions about private lending and shares insights on navigating challenges in real estate financing. Finally, he outlines the future plans for Temple View Capital and emphasizes the importance of educating clients.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Doug Dolgoff (00:00)
    I think for the newer investors, and again, I’m happy to explain this away because again, I’m a very transparent person. That’s how I operate. It’s how I’ve always operated. And that’s one of the mantras of Temple View Capital. It’s reliability, dependability, transparency. A lot of newer investors hear the term hard money or private money and have this misconception that wait a minute, it sounds like predatory lending, right? You’re gonna offer these huge interest rates in a short period of time and.

    If I don’t pay you back, then you’re going to take my home. That’s 180 from what we do. And again, given our transparency, we’re very careful to explain to investors, look, first of all, our rates you’ll find are very, very, very compelling for whichever loan product it is. It’s not your typical hard money lender

    Erika (02:10)
    Everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Erika and today I’m excited to be chatting with Doug Dolgoff. He’s been making serious moves in the lending and private capital space. Doug, I’m glad to have you on the show today.

    Doug Dolgoff (02:25)
    Thanks very much, Erika. Great to meet you and thanks for having me.

    Erika (02:28)
    Yeah, I think our listeners are going to have a lot to learn and take away. So I just want to jump on in here. First, Doug, can you share what your journey was like to real estate and how you ended up at Temple View Capital?

    Doug Dolgoff (02:43)
    Absolutely. It was definitely due to happenstance. I during my college years, I interned at an investment bank, Bear Stearns, and just assumed, of course, once I graduate college, I’m going to work on Wall Street because I was enrolled in the undergraduate business school. It was a good experience. But after four years, I kind of decided, you know what? This is not a path I want to pursue any longer. I’m not really learning as much as I wanted to. And wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. But I really wanted to pursue something more sales oriented.

    as opposed to just strictly numbers. And a good family friend of mine mentioned to me, why don’t you speak to some of my colleagues? I work in commercial real estate. It’s very much sales oriented. There’s still a financial aspect to it, but it’s more swayed towards the relationship building and maintaining. And so I didn’t know of any commercial real estate firms really in the city back in New York, but I took her up on her kind offer, met with probably four or five different brokers.

    and figured, look, I’m in my mid-20s at the time. It’s probably very little risk to make a career move. And I ended up doing that for 25 years, mostly as an office tenant representative. So I would advise office tenants on their real estate activity. Did that for 17 years in New York, moved to Atlanta seven years ago, continued with my career in commercial real estate, expanded a little bit more into industrial.

    advisory work and also working with landlords. Overall a great experience. just a variety of reasons, after 25 years I kind of figured, I’ve had a good run. I do want to learn other aspects of real estate. Again, by happenstance, I was looking to make a change. Another family friend happened to work at Temple View Capital, which is a private lending firm. I spoke with him not really having any strong intentions to actually pursue this at the time.

    I just figured, look, it’s good to just learn about what he does and see if it sounds interesting. But I was compelled pretty quickly after the first call, ended up interviewing with a firm and had been with them for several months. And it’s been a great experience. It’s been really fantastic just to learn a different side of real estate that I was never exposed to before.

    Erika (04:36)
    Yeah, yeah, wow. And you were in commercial real estate for 25 years and you were starting fresh. What’s been a key to transitioning that expertise smoothly?

    Doug Dolgoff (05:36)
    You know what, even though it’s a different part of the business, I think the skills you acquire in terms of just managing client expectations, business development skills, having the creative mindset, even though again, we’re dealing with different types of asset classes, different goals. Again, when you work with an office tenant, you’re trying to negotiate the best lease for them. When you work with an investor, you’re trying to negotiate the best loan product for them so they can go out and buy a property.

    So it’s really just been getting a comprehensive view of what they’re looking to achieve and they’re just trying to figure out, based on that, what is the best course of action for you? They may have preconceived ideas of what they want and then it’s a question of, okay, well, let me just educate you on our loan programs. Hopefully that can work for you, but if not, let’s just talk about what it is that you’re looking to achieve specifically and let’s figure out maybe the best strategy for you. Maybe it is, maybe it matches what you.

    initially mentioned or maybe, you know, part of my job is to offer guidance. Maybe I’ll raise an idea that you didn’t think about previously. And again, having all that type of experience and working with a variety of tenants in different markets has totally prepared me for that.

    Erika (06:40)
    And Doug, I want to talk a little bit more about Temple View Capital and your experience there thus far. What would you say makes Temple View Capital different from other places?

    Doug Dolgoff (06:52)
    That’s a great question. I Templeview, first and foremost, we are steadfast in our commitment to borrower flexibility. A lot of firms will have interest rates that probably follow pretty close together within a tight band. So sometimes it’s hard to differentiate just right off the bat which lender may be right for me. That’s not to say that we’re not very competitive. As of a week ago, we lowered our rates pretty significantly in a couple of our loan products just to… ⁓

    just to, again, attract as many investors as we can. But I think the big difference between us and some of the others is that even though we have pretty, again, they’re not stringent standards, and we’re not loose or goosey either, but we do have some borrower qualification standards, even though they are flexible, our goal is to really allow borrowers to maintain liquidity as best they can and flexibility to start, you know, if it’s a fix and flip project or ground up construction,

    We wanna help keep those dollars in their pocket or get it to them as quickly as we can so they can start doing their work and not have to worry about, shoot, I’ve got this loan, I’ve gotta start making payments on. So, and again, it’s not just ⁓ lip service, it’s what we do and it’s what we offer. And I think investors are pleasantly surprised if they don’t know much about us. Wow, I didn’t know you guys are able to do that. Most of ⁓ the lenders, actually no, none of the lenders we’ve worked at in the past ever really suggested.

    Erika (08:08)
    Yeah, and I’m sure as you know, it’s helpful when you can tailor those services around the different investors that you’re working with. So what are some common solutions that you have?

    Doug Dolgoff (08:21)
    You know, again, you’re, know, but the best way to describe it is this, you know, we cater well to both experienced investors and novices, you know, completely brand new. And again, there are going to be different sets of standards for each. If you’re a brand new investor, you’ve never done this before, you’ve never purchased a property for rents, or you’ve never done a fix and flip project, or let alone a ground up construction project. Yes, we’re going to have a little bit more of a strict set of guidelines that we need you to satisfy in order to lend to you.

    But that’s not to say that we won’t. The only product that we don’t lend with limited experience is ground-up construction, because it’s a much bigger undertaking to build a house or demolish a house and completely build new than I want to renovate my kitchen. we do cater to both seasoned and newbies, we’re novices, for our rehab program, our bridge loan program, and our DSCR rental program. Ground-up, you do have to be experienced.

    But the more experienced you are, the better the terms become for you. Our goal is obviously repay business for our clients. But after, three different, if you have three basically loans that you’ve taken from us and paid off, you all of sudden jump to the top of our, we have platinum, gold, silver, and bronze tier investors. And again, that’s based on their experience level. Once you’ve worked with us,

    and satisfy the conditions and paid off the loan amounts, you jump right to the front. So again, there are definitely added incentives for more experienced investors. But again, we really do try to track both. And the bronze level ones, we’re hoping to eventually work with them so that they eventually become silver, gold, and then platinum. Because then they’ll have better rates, better LTV values, more options available to them.

    Erika (10:33)
    Absolutely, that’s great. I’m sure as you know, Doug, every real estate pro has a moment that is challenging. Maybe a deal goes sideways. Maybe you have to completely pivot for a client. Can you share one of those moments on your journey and what you learned from it?

    Doug Dolgoff (10:50)
    Yeah, mean for me, look, I’m only a couple of months into my TempleView Capital career. So in the beginning it was just a whirlwind of information, right? I didn’t really have a good working knowledge of any of the loan products we offered. And each product comes about a 50 or 60 page guideline packet of all sorts of caveats and all sorts of qualification standards. So as I pour through it, you learn something new, which is great. But.

    I would say, know, in terms of real live deal making, has been, or there have been a few instances where something, again, didn’t exactly check the box. But as a loan officer, it’s my job, while protecting the interests of the company, to also work with the investor and try to figure out what would work best for them. Trying to think of probably the most prominent case recently.

    Okay, so one came back. They were looking to do a fix and flip, they’re not, not even, I’m sorry, not fix and flip. They were looking to a fix and hold. So they were looking to rehab a property and then refinance into a long-term rental loan so that they could rent the property out for however long they planned to do it. One of the things they were hoping for was a larger loan to value on, you know, for the DSCR piece, but.

    Given the fact that the rental rates that they were probably going to get for this particular property wasn’t a high enough ratio versus the mortgage costs, the insurance costs, the homeowners association costs didn’t qualify at a high enough value. had to basically say to them, look, we’d love to work with you. We just have to scale back the LTV based on again, it’s all going to come down to the rentals that you can get and the appraiser verifies. So they’re very understanding of that. They understand our standards.

    What I will say, which is a great benefit as well with that particular program, most lenders will require that the DSCR ratio is one, meaning that you recoup all of your costs, your rental versus your loan costs and again, taxes, insurance and other fees. We will allow you to go down to as low as .75 based on other factors, based on your credit score, again, based on the appraised value of the home to make sure it checks out with

    with the rates that you’re telling us. So we do have flexibility there as well. And because this particular group qualified based on their experience, we were able to work with them. Again, weren’t able to give them the exact loan amount they were initially looking for, but they were still able to qualify probably much easier than they would at a competing shot that wasn’t a required DSCR value of at least one. Whereas again, we can go down to three quarters of that amount.

    Erika (13:12)
    It’s nice that you can offer different solutions for people depending on the situation that they’re in.

    Doug Dolgoff (13:20)
    Yeah, exactly. And that’s why I’m very careful to explain to investors, even seasoned ones who’ve done this for years and years and have, you know, scores of properties under their belt. I say to them, you know, just look at the loan program holistically. Don’t just focus on one thing. If you’re only focused on rate, OK, that’s the that’s the only thing you’re looking at. You know, maybe we’re not the best shop for you, even though, again, we do offer very competitive rates. It’s the other things we can do that others don’t that maybe make us more compelling. Like I just said, you know, other

    may not go down below one on a rental property. We will, again, it has to be long term or short term, but we will if that’s the case. What are we doing in terms of advancing you money? Again, since we want to maintain your liquidity as best we can, maybe another firm that’s offering you maybe an eighth better, which doesn’t really equate to much in terms of monthly savings, but we can actually defer those payments through an escrow payment program. So now you can maintain or keep those dollars in your pocket.

    And like I mentioned earlier, those advanced draws, that’s a big selling point. If you’re doing a pretty extensive rehab project, not ground up instruction, we don’t offer advanced draws on that, but for an extensive rehab project, wouldn’t it be great to know that the first 25,000 or whatever the dollar amount is, you get it right away as opposed to having to come out your own pocket and finance it on your own and then reimburse or get reimbursed for it. So yes, absolutely. I always say to any investor I meet or speak to,

    Let me present all of the attributes of the program and not just focus on rate, because you may find that, I’m willing to sacrifice a little bit of savings, but to get a whole lot more in terms of operational flexibility and, again, liquidity.

    Erika (15:34)
    with working with people from a wide range of experience when it comes to investors, what’s that one common misconception that you see when they come to you?

    Doug Dolgoff (15:44)
    I think for the newer investors, and again, I’m happy to explain this away because again, I’m a very transparent person. That’s how I operate. It’s how I’ve always operated. And that’s one of the mantras of Temple View Capital. It’s reliability, dependability, transparency. A lot of newer investors hear the term hard money or private money and have this misconception that wait a minute, it sounds like predatory lending, right? You’re gonna offer these huge interest rates in a short period of time and.

    If I don’t pay you back, then you’re going to take my home. That’s 180 from what we do. And again, given our transparency, we’re very careful to explain to investors, look, first of all, our rates you’ll find are very, very, very compelling for whichever loan product it is. It’s not your typical hard money

    which may be an individual or a much smaller group that is self-funding themselves or maybe through a family doesn’t have the flexibility that we do. So yes, may charge you 13, 14, 15%.

    You know, ours are probably on the high side, 11, but they go down much further. Again, the more experienced you are, they can go down to nine. In our DSCR, it’s, you know, six and a half. But the important thing I want them to take away from this is we’re not gonna require that you pay us back like in six months or three months. We want you to have the necessary time to complete your project in order to sell it or, again, if it’s a grand construction, to complete a brand new home.

    Again, we don’t want you to feel that pressure because it doesn’t work for either of us, right? Because we don’t expect you’re going to finish a fix and flip in three months or if it’s extensive in six months or if it’s a ground up in maybe even 12 months. It may take longer. So we want our investors to understand, A, that our rates are much more commensurate or much closer to conventional versus a true hard money lender. And our term lengths are designed to give you flexibility so you’re not worried about what happens if I don’t pay back. It’s quite frankly, we don’t want to take the

    Right. It’s not it’s not something we want to deal with from a practical standpoint but it’s not something we want to deal with either from just a.

    Just a personal, we don’t want you to have to go through that. So.

    Erika (17:36)
    Yeah,

    absolutely. You want your customers to be successful. It just makes sense.

    Doug Dolgoff (17:42)
    They’re successful, we’re successful, and again, the goal is, again, we may have borrowers who do this one off every now and then. That’s not really the core investor that we work with. It’s more about the repeat builders and fix and flippers and renters that are gonna come to us once a month and maybe more. And we wanna accommodate them as best we can. But again, just wanna stress that that’s really more for the newer investors about just explaining to them the difference between private and conventional money.

    what we require in terms of credit, what we don’t require, what banks would typically require, the speed to fund. But we also want them to know we’re not cutting corners, right? We’re going to make an informed decision probably with less documentation than a bank would require, but you’ll understand why we’re asking these questions too and why we’re so transparent because we don’t want to get down the end of the road.

    and all of a sudden tell you, we forgot to ask for this or this didn’t check out properly. That’s what we want to avoid at all costs. We want to make sure once we start the process and it gets to underwriting that all those questions are answered, so that’s a very smooth process. And I’m sorry, for experienced investors, yeah, the messaging is just look, the more experienced you are and the more you do work with us, there are additional benefits that again, not other lenders are doing.

    And also the fact that we are self-funded, we make the decisions, we don’t have to, we don’t say we can do things without actually knowing that we can. And again, if it’s a question of whether we can or can’t, we have a management committee that is open door policy that we can easily present a case for them and then they can make an informed decision. ultimately we are the decision makers and not just some third party that we hope that will adhere to what it is that you’re looking for.

    Erika (19:16)
    Speaking of you guys being the decision makers, what has Temple View Capital decided is next on the horizon?

    Doug Dolgoff (19:24)
    So excitedly, I’m excited to mention this. ⁓ We are excitedly welcoming in new loan officers. I’m part of the first class that was hired back in August. There were six of us. Differing backgrounds, differing industry experience. Some were more on the conventional side. Some were actual mortgage brokers that wanted to now work directly with us as a lender. From what I understand, it’s probably gonna be, you know,

    45 ish loan officers joining from around the country. You we want to make sure we cover certain pockets, you know, around the nation. And because we land in 47 states, exceptions being North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont, just because I imagine smaller cities, much more rural areas, we don’t really lend on rural properties. Again, there can be exceptions made. We’re trying to address that now. But other than that, you 47 states and yet we’d like to be.

    if not a household name, then at least better known than we currently are in areas that we haven’t previously served as maybe as well as we’d like. So yeah, it’s exciting for everyone. Again, the more people we hire, the more our name gets out there and the easier, maybe the easier it will be for me, who’s very, very, very diligent in terms of just marketing myself on LinkedIn and Facebook and other platforms like this.

    Maybe work gets out there and someone will start to recognize more. yeah, okay, Temple View. I know them from so and so.

    Erika (20:44)
    Yeah, that’s exciting stuff. Well, Doug, if someone wants to connect with you or Temple View Capital, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

    Doug Dolgoff (20:54)
    ⁓ So I am on LinkedIn, Doug Dolgoff, it’s D-O-L-G-O-F-F. My phone number is 917-359-1056 and my email address is D as in Doug and then my last name Dolgoff, that’s again D-O-L-G-O-F-F @ templeviewcap.com.

    Erika (21:15)
    Well, Doug, I appreciate you being here, sharing your story and your expertise. We need more people who are doing things in real estate with the excitement that you have.

    Doug Dolgoff (21:21)
    Thank you.

    Thank you very much. really enjoyed it. And I encourage anyone to reach out because again, part of what I love doing is just educating. And so, you know, again, they say that, you know, an educated client is the best client. that’s what we find and that’s what we promote as best we can. So feel free to reach out if I can be of help.

    Erika (21:27)
    and

    I love that generosity, Doug. And for our listeners here, if you got value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations lined up with pros like Doug, who are out there building fantastic real estate businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.

    Doug Dolgoff (21:43)
    Thank you.

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