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Some of us originate from somewhere away from real estate investing. A person who has been through the same journey is Steve Driscoll of ECONO HOMES, LLC who talks about his experiences and all things private lending. He shares his background on how he went from auto finance to real estate investing, walking us through cars and houses. Steve gives some great insights on how he runs things, from buying and liquidating credit card paper to financing. Touching as well on subjects like LTV and RMLO, he brings information that shows the inner ropes of private lending.
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Listen to the podcast here:

All Things Private Lending with Steve Driscoll
I'm proud and honored to have Steve Driscoll with us. I met Steve down in Cancun on the Mitch Stephen Real Estate Mastermind. If there's anything you want to know about that trip, Steve could tell you all the dirt on me and everything. Steve, thanks for coming on. It's good to see you.

Thanks for asking me to come on board.

There's no formal structure to this interview. I wanted Steve to come on. We got along good down in Cancun. I've seen him in Texas since then at another Mitch Stephen event and I wanted to continue the roll. You were on very quickly on the episode I did regarding the Cancun mastermind, but I want to delve a little deeper into your past and what you do. Correct me if I'm wrong but you are a New York gangster. You’re in the mob.

I was out in the San Antonio and Houston. I didn't spend much time in Houston. It's a nice part of the world there but it's a lot different than what New York is and a lot different than the Northeast. You don't appreciate the country until you start traveling around it. I had a great time. I met some good people.

You did it right. You went down there in October, which is a good time to go to Texas; May through September. Besides that former criminal activity that you never did, I know you have a background in finance. Give us your background in how you went and got into auto finance I believe now you're doing in real estate. Walk us through how you went from cars to houses.



The cars started way back. I took a hobby and decided to make a living out of it. I love automobiles. Who doesn't love cars? Who doesn't like cars? I was a kid and I was selling cars out of my driveway. As time went on, I opened up car dealerships and it was around 1985. In 1985, when our friends from Korea started bringing cars to the US under the name Hyundai, we also got another beautiful automobile here called the Pyeonghwa. Detroit started to feel the pinch because they were taking sales away. They started dropping their interest rates and as they dropped the interest rates down, they were buying anybody's loans that they could fog a mirror speaking.

We went from doing a great business to being almost shut down overnight. What do you do? You had to reinvent. If you're an entrepreneur or a true person, you better roll with the punches. You've got to change with the market and you've got to make yourself reinvent it. We went ahead. I did a little research and I said, “It's the same thing in the real estate market if you're doing financing. Look at the biggest side of the market. The biggest side of the market is the people that can't get financed and it's over 80%.” At the time back in the ‘80s New York metro area, over 80% of the people who were shopping to buy a car didn't qualify. I said, “I want to go service that into the market.” I made some alliances with some finance companies and that these guys were absolute crooks. They were the gangsters. I said, “If these guys can do this, I can do this legitimately.”

I went and I became a licensed finance company. In New York State, that's not an easy thing to do. Nothing's easy to do in New York, but I did it for a long time.