The borrowers were stuck in a high interest rate private money loan with regular demands coming from their current note holder for payoff when they came to SECC. Comfortable lending in the small loan space, SECC funded a 15 year fixed permanent loan at 11.5%, despite the borrowers 629 credit score and the property being in a town of only 4,700 people.

A seasoned property investor was finding it difficult to secure bridge financing to acquire a distressed single family residence in Cook County Illinois. Despite the borrower’s track record of rehab success, private lenders back away from this opportunity scared of the County’s declining property values. SECC provided a 70% non-recourse bridge loan at 9% interest only, and with no prepayment penalty.

Noah Grayson, managing director and founder of South End Capital Corp., wrote an excellent article for the Scotsman Guide about how the commercial real estate market is experiencing a rise in loan fraud as loan demand has started growing.

A successful Chicago based construction company hit a brick wall when looking for a revolving line of credit to finance one of its projects. SECC, not fearful of the construction industry and demonstrating its flexibility, provided a 12 month prime based revolving line of credit, with no advance cap.

With the economy improving and capital beginning to flow back into the commercial loan marketplace, unfortunately, incidences of  mortgage fraud are also rising — and at an alarming rate. Because there is no oversight organization designated to report such cases of fraud, it’s difficult to assign quantifiable statistics to the rate of occurrence in commercial lending.

Fear of the unknown is an entirely rational response. The conservative policy of “look before you leap” has always been one of the central tenets of financially responsible and stable lenders.