Private Money Loans and Hard Money with Sean and Ajay
Thursday on the Ask Christina First radio show I had the
pleasure of interviewing Sean Morsi and Ajay Mehra of Mor Financial. Their company assists passive and active investors (flippers) by funding them. They also raise the capital for private loans, commercial short-term bridge loans, and single-family loans.
My first question to both gentlemen was, “Why real estate?”
Sean- “As a sophomore in college, I wanted to learn a new business and I started as a loan officer assistant. It was during the real estate boom and soon after that I started in conventional lending. In 2006 I went out on my own and started Mor Financial.”
Ajay- “ For me, my mom has always been in real estate, so since age 12 I was familiar with the industry. As a freshman in college, one of my sisters was a loan officer and the other was a stockbroker and the sister who was loan officer, her job seemed more enticing. I developed a passion for it, and I was actually a competitor of Sean’s for a while, that’s how we met and we eventually began working together.”
I asked Sean and Ajay to explain what exactly hard money is. They collectively agreed that they define hard money as private capital used for investors, flippers, or commercial buyers. Any and all buyers who may not qualify for bank loans. Mor Financial creates opportunities for investors by raising capital to allow them to acquire properties. We all agreed that hard money lenders of the past have received a bad rap. So my question to them was how and why have they become fore leaders in the way the industry behaves.
Sean- “We wanted to bring customer service to the private lending industry. We make well on and deliver on our promises and we take pride in our relationships. We’re after people who do 10-30 properties a year and we want them to know they can come to us and it will be handled on time. AJAY has done a great job of working with our borrowers and investors.”
Ajay- “When we started, we wanted to eliminate the whimsicality and to bring a human aspect to the industry. We cultivate relationships with borrowers. We call to say happy birthday, they can call us on our cell phones. We aren’t like hard money lenders of the past.”
If you ever work with Mor Financial or visit their office, you will, like me, notice right away that their underwriting office has a lot of people. I inquired as to why that is.
Ajay- “We look at each deal as it being one of our own. If our clients don’t benefit, we don’t benefit either because we’ve lost their business. We want to see our customers succeed. Sean and I are tainted for the hard money world, we do make sure borrowers are in the most favorable position for our investors. We don’t want to set our borrowers up for failure.“
I asked them where they see hard money going and both agreed that lower rates will replace the sub prime market. Mor Financial is not in the loan to own business and self-employed people can’t walk into a bank and get a loan. They recognize that they are seeing borrowers who are well qualified, borrowers who have 700+ credit scores and who get undercut by 10 day closes if they’re a 45 day close.
Sean, Ajay, and the team at Mor Financial has developed Mor Synergy where they highlight educators, speakers, and forward thinkers to help those at home get into the industry and network with others. Sean explained that their business is all about leverage, financials, and relationship. To him, the business is more about “how can I connect this individual with another?” That strategy helps them to establish who you are in the industry and your reputation.
Thank you to Sean and Ajay and for more information about their business, contact them at MorFinancial.com