Posted by ccreed50 on March 30, 2000 at 20:07:23:
Yeah thanks Terry–I did go to the “How to have Bankers Crawling Across Acres of Broken Glass to Make You a Loan”…but I guess it just didn’t take. Great war stories 'n’all, but when the latex hits the asphalt it’s a different game. It’s a good seminar in that it can point the naive and confused in the right direction, but…for example–the small banks recommendation? Yeah–small, (or ‘unit’) banks CAN portfolio a loan that the majors won’t touch–if they like your deal. Or, if the president/owner of the bank likes you. But those portfolio loans come at ‘screw me’ prices–and they expect you to thank them for the priv. And why shouldn’t they? If you can fog a mirror you can get a 125% 1-4 type loan all day long–for a price. But the best–long-term/low-rate–products we’ve seen come out of the biggest, baddest, most bureaucratic moneycenter banks–headquartered in London, LA, Tokyo and New York. They define hard-to-work-with. Adding a few brokers in there doesn’t make it any easier, they just gum up the works and add their points. (Better? As if they’ve got some kinda pull with the underwriters? Right. We had a VP at Fleet–how far do you think that got us?)
Don’t get me wrong–I like brokers. Ed Garcia, Paul Kinney at nexcom, Sean McKenna at CTX–great guys all, genial, personable, well-spoken–good at explaining things, especially things that go wrong. Born diplomats, all of them. Adept at soothing the irate client–as when the 90 day close stretches out to 180 days.
So I did catch a pitch from a broker who “works with pension funds & yadayada”. I know allabout tha’. Like tits on a bull.
–cr
PS. Since we’ve had our real-world seminar we’ve found out just what goes into a ‘package’ that bulks it up to 150+ pages. Mebbe I should hold my own seminar.