Building A Strong Investor Profile To Stand Out to Lenders

Chris Naghibi, the Chief Credit Officer of First Foundation Bank joins us to talk about what investors can do to build a solid investor profile and get the best terms on their loans. --- Transcript   Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The remote real estate investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of the real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by my co host, Tom Schneider, as well as a very special guest, Chris Naghibi, who is the chief credit officer for First Foundation Bank. And Chris is gonna be talking to us today about lending overall, and what we as real estate investors need to be aware of. So let's get into it.   Awesome, Chris, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with Tom and I really appreciate you.   Chris: Oh, thank you guys. Appreciate you guys having me on.   Michael: Yeah, absolutely. So for all of our listeners out there would love to know and have you share a little bit about your background and how you got into the real estate space and kind of what you're doing today.   Chris: You know, backgrounds kind of kind of schizophrenic, I look at my own resume. Sometimes I wonder like how this path has taken me where I'm at. I'm an attorney by trade. We started a bank in October 2007. And somewhere along the way I feel I felt like I fell in love with real estate. I've done it since I was a kid. My father, when I was 14, he handed me a cold call list and told me to call everybody and told me that for everybody, I got to give him an application to give me 500 bucks.   Well, the first day I made 1000, and he refused to pay me. But I never stopped falling in love with real estate and kind of the concept of the fact that we all have to know about it. And then I eventually, you know, branched out started a law firm, started my own real estate company, and I still work at the bank. We're publicly traded. And you know, it's just it's been a wild ride. But you know, it's my crazy, crazy background.   Tom: What are some unexpected things in starting a bank? Like I love that, Yeah, we started a bank like what is what are your, I guess, three takeaways that you were unexpected assumptions? Or? I don't know, you can take them any direction. So three bullet points.   Chris: There's a lot of assumptions. Yeah. Well, let me tell you three bullet points about starting a bank. It's hard. It's a lot harder than you think. I think people think regulators like Oh, the SEC, you know, or, or, you know, oh, it's have some little bit of oversight regulators are very strict. When you start a bank, you have to write a business plan out for three years in advance. And then you have to stick to that business plan for three years, except we started a bank in October 2007,   Michael: Great time to get into banking.   Chris: Probably not the best written business plan given the market, we rolled with it nonetheless. The second thing is, is relationships are so vital. You can grow a bank and you can do such a huge thing. But relationships so that choose from a currency, right? Well, if you're starting a bank, and you're trying to build something from the ground up, like any business, a bank is no different. Who you know, and how much they believe in, you really matters.   And the third thing, businesses scale differently. And banks definitely scale in a very unique way. It's a slow, you know, grind over time. But money builds money and interest rates are such an pure form of building passive income. And banks make such a huge amount of money from it, but