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Luis Delgado:
Welcome everyone to the RealAtom broker podcast series, where you will learn about the brokers on the RealAtom platform and the organizations they represent. My name is Luis Delgado, account executive at RealAtom. RealAtom is the industry’s number one lending as a service technology platform, empowering mortgage brokers, commercial estate lenders, such as banks, credit unions, non-banking organizations to generate more CRE loans today. I have the pleasure to introduce Robert Withers president at M1 capital. Welcome, and thank you for taking the time to present to us today. Gonna pass things over to you. Could you tell us a little bit more about, you know, who you are, what your firm does, the kind of deals you guys work on.
Robert Luis:
Thanks, Luis. I appreciate it. And thank you again for asking me to join you today. As you mentioned, our company’s name is M1 capital corp. We are commercial real estate finance, brokers. We’re located in New York, White Plains. New York is where our headquarters is. We also have an office in New York City, the satellite office on the third avenue. We place commercial real estate financing requests pretty much across all of the major real commercial real estate asset classes multifamily, light industrial, mixed-use properties of all different sizes, single-purpose, single-use properties, some storage, self-storage. So we have some self-storage financing solutions also to offer. We started our company in 2014. We were formed in 2012, pretty much hit the road running in 2014. And we have enjoyed a great you know, it’s, it’s good times in our industry. I mean, we saw some challenges during COVID, but it was really more of extending ourselves to help our clients in the things that they needed where maybe they weren’t doing as many acquisitions, they needed refining, they maybe needed bridge loan financing to take advantage of new opportunities. We restructured some loans on their behalf with their current lenders, some of which we had to help them place loans with, and some of them we had no relationship with. We are a boutique. We pride ourselves in the fact that we’re nimble. We’re not the 800-pound gorilla on the street or in the neighborhood. But we have arranged financing for some of the more known and well respected real estate developers and owners in our area.
Luis Delgado:
Got it. Okay. Robert, could you tell us about, do you have any examples of some dos that you guys closed, where you could kind?
Robert Withers:
Go over? I do first of all, just real quickly, as I mentioned, we’re a full-service commercial real estate finance company. We pride ourselves in being an alternative solution to conventional bank financing and commercial just, we focus just on commercial, commercial, real estate financing. We’ve been on the R team in the industry for over 30 years. And like I mentioned, the asset classes that we use, pretty much our niche is the 500,000 to 25 million loan sizes. Our mission statement is providing creative, competitive, and cutting edge commercial real estate, finance, and solutions using proven relationships and state-of-the-art technology like RealAtom while delivering a superior client experience from start to finish. Let me give you some ideas. These are the different four basic, main different types of services that we offer. And I am just going to very quickly go through the rest of my presentation, which you don’t need to see but can bring you to some of our success stories. So success stories. All right. So a success story. Number one, I’d like to share with you, Luis, is Mount Vernon, New York here suburb in Westchester county. We had a building owner who, after a couple of attempts using retail money center banks. We know who those are contacted at M1 capital corp. And we selected the right lender. They, they, he owned, he had his business in the building. Part of it was vacant. Part of it was rented out. And the lender that we chose saw the benefit in an owner-occupied building and saw the benefit in the industry that he was in and where others said, no, they said, yes. And they wasted a, you know, we didn’t waste any more time. We got right down to business and we closed the over, you know, a couple of million-dollar loans on great terms, and the client was extremely happy.
So that, that’s one example, spec construction, very, very popular especially in certain markets. And in this one, it was Florida. We do a lot of business in this market both out in, in this space, both out in the Hamptons for spec home building, and also in certain areas of Florida. We had been introduced to a South American builder who had purchased several buildings, lots for cash, and wanted to construct a condominium project just as the condominium project started becoming outta Vogue. This guy got the great idea of building condos and selling them in a section of Fort Lauderdale. And, you know, given the fact that he was from South America, he didn’t have the established relationships in the Florida area, a lot of the money center at regional banks said no to him, you know, for whatever reason, they said no to him.
And we found an alternative lender onto pretty decent terms who got in, got on a flight, and flew down there. I met them down there went to the site, went over the project, and in an afternoon over a quick inspection of the property, some due diligence of their financials, and a couple of espressos where we were able to put the deal couple Venezuela, espresso, believe, oh, it’s something you must try if you’ve never had it. We put the deal together. I flew back and we funded it like 45 days later. And I think the last unit will be sold at the end of 2020. So it was a very successful sell-out of the project and everyone was quite happy. Our third story is very interesting. It was another introduction from an attorney who knew a New England-based manufacturing company that had been owned and in the family for over a hundred years and they own the building and they had run into some problems.
The industry that they serve, they were basically a very niche company. They served the industry and this industry had basically fallen on hard times. So their business fell on hard times and they ran afoul of certain loan cos in their current mortgage and, and they went into default. After a couple of deferments, they went into default. We were able to put together a team including a CPA and some other experts. And we are able to work with their current lender negotiate, a short payoff of the mortgage, provide bridge loan financing for them so that they were able to get out of that relationship that had gone bad. We were able to work with them through which was part of the loan request. Actually, they had to work with a CPA to be able to right side their business plan, broaden their product line, and do a complete turnaround. And within three years paid off the bridge loan financing, and we were able to move on to permanent financing and they’re enjoying a great relationship with that bank today. So that’s what we do.
Luis Delgado:
I like it. These are just so great, great stories for sure. Yeah. And in the process, you had some good Venezuela espressos.
Robert Withers:
And a great contact. Ignacio is gen, he’s a genitor gem of a man. And we stay in touch today and have worked on other projects.
Luis Delgado:
I actually have like, maybe two, three before wrap up. I know you have to, you have to go in a bit. Do you remember the first year you closed as a mortgage broker?
Robert Withers:
Well, you know, I cut my teeth Luis in the residential business. And I remember the first residential loan I ever closed, but the first commercial loan I closed was believe it or not. Within one of those companies, which became M1 capital, it was sort of a series of transitions. And it was the corp, it was a center that IBM used here in Westchester county. They were the tenants of the building. And it was the first-ever commercial loan that we closed again from M1 capital’s. Former company. And that was a 13 million permanent mortgage for an IBM center here in local Westchester. So I remember that one, because obviously, it was a bit, it was a pretty decent-sized loan and the tenant was noteworthy, but it would be a tough one to Forget.
Luis Delgado:
And, and do you have a very, a daily thought that you weren’t gonna close, but you ended up closing somehow like a tough, crazy deal, but you got it done just
Robert Withers:
Just recently. We closed a loan in Connecticut. I won’t say where exactly, but we closed a loan in Connecticut. It was a light industrial loan for a few million dollars on a building that was not anywhere near stabilized. It was bridge-alone financing that had an underlying environmental issue. that could never be cured. It was an actual pool of Oil that was under this building, but it was concentrated. It was centered under the building. The DEA had determined that it was no threat to any of the water tables in the area. The fire department of the local town still had it as being an issue, but it was going to take some litigation to solve it. We found a bridge loan lender that would actually lend on that so that he could finish the renovations to the building to stabilize it and bring in tenants with the ongoing environmental issue in place. Because of the loan to value. It was a loan whose value was like 30%. So we got it done and I didn’t think it was gonna get done, but we got it.
Luis Delgado:
I’m glad to hear you got it done. Awesome. Robert. Robert, where can people find you or how do you, where, where should they email you? Should they go to the website call you, you know, where do you wanna
Robert Withers:
The best way is info@mortgage1.com Luis or you can go to https://www.mortgage1.com/ and find out a little bit more about what our company does. So our web website is pretty robust.
Luis Delgado:
Okay. And then one, actually to have one final question: what do you like most about CRE and what do you do?
Robert Withers:
You know, I mentioned before Luis, I cut my teeth in the residential business. I owned two pretty large residential brokerages here in New York. And in 2008, I sold the last one right before the financial crisis. Actually, I didn’t know anything. It just was dumb luck, but I wound up exiting the company at that time. You know, I stayed in the residential business for a few years after consulting, but one day I walked into Walmart with my young daughter when she was five. And on the wall, I saw you get your residential mortgage here. You could actually apply for a mortgage at Walmart. And I looked up at that and I said, it’s time for me to move on. Nothing against Walmart, it great company.
But when you commoditize. A financial service such as selecting a mortgage so that you can buy it at a store, like at, I got very concerned about where the industry was going now, since then, obviously, the audience has changed right. With all the new solutions that have come out to attract millennials and, and, and, and, and people in that, you know, in that age group who feel more comfortable going online, getting a mortgage. But for me, where my services have always been more consultary in nature and being an advisor, I just knew it was time. So what I love about this business in a very long-winded way that I just explain to you is, is that I like being of counsel to people and advising them on their choices, rather than just providing something that in some people’s eyes is a commodity
Luis Delgado
Robert, appreciate your sharing. If you’re interested in speaking with Robert Withers, please do not hesitate to contact him directly. If you want to talk with me in between episodes, feel free to shoot me an email at Luis@realatom.com. And if you’re interested in learning more about the RealAtom broker podcast series or RealAtom in general, please feel free to visit our web website realatom.com. Thanks, everybody again, special. Thanks to Robert Withers, and we’ll see you on the next podcast episode.
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