Commercial Real Estate Pro Network

J. Darrin Gross:

I'd like to ask you, Michael Zuber, what is the BIGGEST RISK?

Michael Zuber  

So the biggest risk? And again, I asked myself this all the time, right? Because I look at it, I go, what is my biggest risk? And if I can, if I can survive the downside, right? up through all those things, those that I think about it all the time. So in my portfolio, my biggest risk that I've been working on all year is variable interest rate risk. I have commercial loans, I own apartment buildings. And those loans reset 357 10 years, depending on what you have. And over the last year, I have feared that I could see at point of refi, where rates, you know, I had a rate of three and a half. I was like, what happens if this is seven, seven and a half? Right? So what I had been doing actively over the last year or so is taking all of my loans and looking for ways to get 30 year money. One thing you can do because there's now for the first time, really in the last couple years are these vendors called non qm lenders, non non qm lenders. And I work with a lender who has taken all of my apartment risk and allowed me to get 30 year money at 3.99%. So it's not a Fannie Freddie loan, it's a 3.9 non qm lender. So I've been I've been actively working to get all of my apartment buildings, and I'm even paying prepayment penalties on one of my loans. Because I I'm deathly afraid of interest rates shooting up. And if that happens, of course, apartment buildings, if rates go to seven cap rates, gotta go to what 910 and then the valuation calls and they're gonna say, hey, you're now in technical default and you got to cut a big check. That freaked me out for a while. So I've been working very hard to Take all of my just double rate mortgages on apartment buildings and go get 30 year money even if I have to, even though my payment goes up slightly now, I'm okay with that. So that was the biggest one for me. Cuz I looked out years ahead and go, wow. Because again, I've been through the last crash, what caused the last residential crash? It's all those adjustable rate mortgages that popped up that and their payments reset. I looked at that going, Oh my God, if that happens to my apartment buildings, and then the cap rate goes up and the value is cut in half. You know, where do I go? So that was a big one for me. So that's, I'm working on my last one right now.