If you’re a private lender and you’re not originating as many loans as you’d like, chances are you have a distribution problem. Not enough people in your market know you exist or think to call you. The best way to solve a distribution problem is to go out in the real world, and do things that feel too small to matter.
As the CEO of Baseline, I talk to private lenders every day. I study them, track what’s working, and watch for patterns that separate the ones who grow from the ones who stall. Before that, I spent a decade as a private real estate lender myself. Here are four strategies I’d use to increase my origination volume.
1. Put your sign on the yard
Every large commercial lender in the country plasters its brand on the projects it finances. Drive past a mid-rise going up in any city and you'll see the construction lender's logo on the fence. They do this because it works.
Private lenders, for reasons I've never fully understood, mostly don't. You are already financing a flip on a street where cars pass by every day. Some meaningful fraction of the people in those cars are exactly the borrower you want. Someone who drives past a renovation and thinks, I could do that. A branded yard sign turns every project you fund into a billboard aimed at some of the best-qualified audience you can reach.
One word of advice. Keep it simple and make the contact information legible to a person going thirty-five miles an hour. Maybe add a QR code that directs them to your loan application for anyone that stops to scan.
2. Look for dumpsters in the driveway
When I was originating loans myself, I used to get in my car and drive the neighborhoods where flips happen, looking for dumpsters in driveways. A dumpster means a project. A project means someone spending money to renovate, which means someone who either has a lender or needs one.
Sometimes the owner is on site and you have a conversation. More often it’s a contractor or a sub, and that's fine, because the value of the exercise was never just the one meeting. You are taking the pulse of your market and building a rolodex of contacts. At the very least, you may be able to introduce another borrower to a roofer or a plumber.
And there is a more subtle payoff I once benefited from when I was a lender. I stopped by a project in Orlando, Florida. The contractor, Jeremy, doing the work was someone who had watched his clients get rich flipping houses and had quietly concluded he could do it better. He knew construction cold. What he lacked was capital. Jeremy became a borrower that I quite literally manufactured. Capital was the one thing standing between him and his first deal, and I showed up with a solution to his problem.
3. Treat wholesalers to lunch
Look at who stands between the seller and the investor. In much of the country, that's the wholesaler: the person who ties up distressed properties and assigns them to the investors who'll rehab them. Wholesalers touch an enormous volume of deals, and their borrowers trust them (controversial take, I know). When a wholesaler suggests a lender, that suggestion carries weight a cold outreach never will.
My brother, Alam Wali, runs one of the largest wholesale operations in Central Florida, Spectrum Property Group. I've watched this dynamic from the inside and here’s what I’ve observed time and time again. An investor closes with whatever lender she's always used, and that lender underperforms. Requires an appraisal for a property that needs to close in 3 days or has an issue with simultaneous closings. The deal is now at risk, the wholesaler's reputation is on the line, and everyone is looking for someone who can close. That is your opening. A lender who has already built the relationship, who picks up the phone and saves the deal, doesn't just win that loan. He becomes the name the wholesaler gives out by default.
Build relationships with your local wholesalers. Host a lunch and learn, take them to a baseball game, offer them transactional funding, or whatever it takes to stay top of mind and get in their good books. Incumbents fumble constantly. Be the one positioned to catch it.
4. Buy the data and use it
The last one is non-negotiable for any serious lending operation. A database like Elementix will tell you who is buying in your market, who their lender is, and what their track record looks like. For sales, this is obvious gold. You can see exactly who is active, whom they borrow from, and where you might displace someone.
What I appreciate about it most, though, is that the same data cuts the other way. The information that tells you whom to pursue also tells you whom to avoid. A borrower's history, the lenders who've backed him, the pattern of his deals. Elementix is an underwriting and risk management tool as much as it is a prospecting list. Most tools do one job. A tool that sharpens both your origination and your credit decisions is a no-brainer. Like I said, it's a must-have for any serious private lender.
Why few lenders will do this
All of these things require action and that’s what makes them difficult to execute, even though they seem simple on the surface. None of these will produce results in one afternoon. They require you to be present, physically and repeatedly, in the market you serve.
That is exactly why they work. The industry is drifting toward institutionalization. Sophisticated levers like cheaper capital and better software are accessible to everyone, including your competitors. What differentiates local lenders is the willingness to put up a yard sign, driving around looking for dumpsters in driveways, building a relationship with a local wholesaler, and knowing your market cold. Those things take time and effort but they compound massively.
