15:16
Speaker 2
Foreign. This is Robert Chadwick with America Mortgages. Thank you for joining us. For what will be our outlook for 2026, as everybody knows, or we’re expecting rates to come down. And we want to be able to advise you properly on how maybe you should look at the US real estate market in of terms 2026. And I’m conveniently joined here by my co founder, Donald Klipp. He how the process will work is Donald’s going to go over his slides and basically the economic forecast of how we feel the market is going to turn in 2026 and so what you should prepare for. And then I will go over just what makes American Mortgages unique, what makes us better than other options that may be available.

16:17
Speaker 2
And then it will as always, cover the loan programs which are available as American Mortgages is both a direct lender and a broker. And then after that we will have a question and answer session. So please, you can add your questions into the chat, but we will answer them at the end and order as they are received. Now, throughout the chat, in the chat or throughout the webinar in the chat box, there will be a link to be able to schedule an appointment with one of our loan officers. That link is 24 7. So no matter where you are in the world, you should be able to choose a convenient time to speak to one of our experienced loan officers. And there’s also a telephone number in there if you would choose to call. So with that said, Donald, good to see you.

17:05
Speaker 2
Thanks for joining you. I don’t know how you want to leave.

17:10
Speaker 1
You’re welcome. It’s good to get the band back together. I don’t know if I had a choice not to join, but I’m really super psyched to do these with you and I think it’s a really timely discussion on the U.S. real estate investment market. So I’m looking forward to getting this going.

17:28
Speaker 2
Fantastic. So you want to start your slides. I know everybody is sort of pressed for time here. Get done in an hour.

17:37
Speaker 1
I think you have the slides?

17:38
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna run it here. All right, There you go.

17:47
Speaker 1
All right, so let’s start with who we are. Robert and I founded this company in 2019. We CR to fix the problem of obtaining a US mortgage while living overseas. And like Robert said earlier, we’re now the only US Lender focused only on overseas borrowers. And more importantly, we’re the only US Lender with loan officers overseas to be closer to the client. And Robert will be going through this later in his presentation. But Global Mortgage Group, we offer international Mortgages and global bridging loans to access liquidity from your home equity and larger ticket advisory type deals. Next slide. All right, so the US property, everybody knows about it, everybody knows about New York. It has the best schools, it has famous cities. But there’s really a lack of information that’s kind of my purpose here is to educate you on what’s going on there.

18:46
Speaker 1
It’s quite far from everybody, but let me tell you, last year, 44% more foreigners bought homes in the US so that equates to about 58, 50, $56 billion. Now a lot of that has to do with, you know, the dollar has been weak versus other countries. But it just shows you that actually there’s a lot of interest in US real estate now. And I’ll go into why, what’s, what’s happening with that. But the issue is that, you know, it’s also really hard to get financing. There are no banks overseas that offer US mortgages, and US Banks really don’t want to help clients like you, whereas us, it’s all we do. And we’re more than happy to help customers like yourselves.

19:29
Speaker 1
But also something that I wanted to point about, point to is our team did a rough calculation that if we assume in a 7% increase per year, which is conservative, actually there’s probably 2 to $300 billion in free equity over the past 10 years that clients like you can tap for liquidity and especially as rates come down, which we all think they will. Next slide. All right, there’s three types of U.S. property owners. There’s a second homeowner. These, they may leave empty. You know, as global hubs, they tend to be global businessmen or, you know, business oriented people. And this overlaps with the second type of bar, which is, you know, your child goes overseas to go to school, you kind of buy a place in that city as a hub. You know, you know that is something that’s fairly common.

20:23
Speaker 1
I’ll go into a little bit more of that. And then third which is increasing is, you know, just buying US property for cash flow, rental income and capital appreciation. And I give you examples some of the states where these, these exist. Next slide. So education is a big driver. You know, when people make money in life, they tend to do three things, consistently, regardless of what country you’re in, you eat better food, you take better vacations, and you want your kids to go to better schools. And if you look at this slide, you know, more international students are studying in the US than any other major country, 1.13 million as of 20, 24 and 60, 64% of that comes from Asia. And you can see the other jurisdictions.

21:10
Speaker 1
I think this is going to be increasing, not decreasing because of the, you know, now US Education is cheaper because the dollar is weaker. So, you know, we’re really excited about this. But if you think about, you know, if you have 1 million students, parents with 1 million students studying in the U.S. i would think maybe 500,000 wouldn’t mind buying a home somewhere in the U.S. if they only needed $200,000 to put a down payment and use our mortgage to buy a home there. Next slide. You know, buying a home, you know, while your child is studying there, it just makes sense. You know, you give them, you know, reassurance that when they live, their landlord doesn’t bully them and raise their rent. You can, you can control where they live so they’re not in a bad neighborhood.

21:56
Speaker 1
So it’s peace of mind for a parent and for the student. And, you know, and kind of the warm and fuzzy reasons is that, you know, when you go visit your children in the US you don’t have to stay at a hotel. And hotels in the US Are super expensive. And, you know, if parents like to cook for their child, you can kind of cook their child’s, you know, favorite food when you go visit them. Now, the bottom of the slide. Everybody knows, you know, monthly rent is. Monthly is money gone. A mortgage is wealth building. So I’ll give you an example. This is this is an everyday example. There’s a, you know, child’s going to school in Boston. You maybe buy a condo there or New York for $500,000.

22:34
Speaker 1
You call Rob, you know, call Robert’s team and say, hey, I want a mortgage. We lend you 375,000. And so you put $125,000 down payment, which is really one year’s tuition in the U.S. after five years, four or five years after they graduate at 10% annual growth, that property now is $800,000. So your $125,000 has grown to 450,000. Do 50,000. That’s four times the return on cash. And next slide. Guess what you can do. So after your child graduates, you know, it’s really common to stay in the US to gain Western experience. Nothing, nothing meets, you know, spending two years at Goldman Sachs or Blackstone before you come back to Singapore or Hong Kong or Germany or London or Jakarta to work, because that has value. So while you’re working in New York. Where do you stay?

23:31
Speaker 1
Well, you stay in the condo that mom and dad bought. Or two, you come back to the, you come back home and you take that property and you’ve just, well, you just made $400,000. You can sell it and pay for a significant portion of your tuition or just keep it as a rental income. And which is super common because after four or five years you entered into the property being skeptical about US real estate. And then four years later you’re like, oh my God, this is an incredible investment. I can earn positive rental yield. The price is going up. I’m just going to keep it. Right. So that’s super common. Next slide. So the US is the number one country for price appreciation. It’s the number one country in the world for rental yield.

24:16
Speaker 1
It’s the lowest price per square foot country versus global cities and has the strongest rental demand, job growth, students, student demand, and migration. Migration trends that add to this buoyant property market. And this is something I can’t emphasize enough. When you invest in a country, you want that country to be your partner, right? And the US system is there to make it easy for you to buy property. They want to be your partner. That’s not the case in other countries. They have ABSD in Singapore, they have stamp duties. Oh, I don’t want, you know, too many foreigners. We have a foreigner tax. Foreigners can’t even get a loan in many countries nowadays. So the US Is a partner. Okay, now there’s something for everybody. In the Southeast. There’s high rental yield. You can buy in Miami.

25:13
Speaker 1
You know, I think with what happened in New York, people are moving into Florida. There’s price appreciation, global demand. It’s a global city. There’s Dallas, which is a sort of a combination of a, a lot of job growth. And it has the most Fortune 500 companies, headquarters there. And then there’s New York. Nothing beats New York. Luxury condos. It’s a college town. It’s also a global hub. And I can tell you know, judging by, you know, there was an article last week that UBS is looking to move headquarters to the US From Europe. Why is that? Because there’s no growth in Europe. Where is all the wealth being created? There’s wealth in Asia, but all kind of politically related. It’s uncertain. You know, there’s inflation, all that kind of stuff. The dollars, the currencies are unstable.

25:56
Speaker 1
The US Is just like incredible growth right now, especially with what’s happening in technology. Next slide. So this is something that we have to, you have to get your head around. There is a significant supply shortage in the US and depending on who you read and who you listen to, it’s anywhere between 3 to, sorry, 5 to 7 million. There’s a lot of reasons for that. It’s another discussion, another webinar just to talk about this. But you have to assume there is supply shortage. Next slide. And so this is, I’m going to go into detail in some subsequent slides. But basically there’s a severe holding housing shortage and a lot of people who have mortgages are locked in. 65% of people who have mortgages under 5% and 25% of mortgagees have their mortgage under 3%. What does that mean? These guys aren’t selling.

26:54
Speaker 1
Because if you sell means that you’re desperate and if you’re desperate, you’re a motivated seller. So you don’t have negotiating power. That’s why in a perverse way, in a high, high interest rate environment, it actually is the best time to buy because anybody selling really needs to sell. Okay, number, Nope, not done. Number three, US is unaffordable. The American dream of owning a home to live in is over. The Median income is 65,000. The average home price is 450,000. People will never be able to own a home. What does that mean? You still have to live. So people who can be landlords have pricing power and that is driving rental yields up. Okay. There’s also the AI boom.

27:41
Speaker 1
It is for every ChatGPT and Microsoft that you hear about, there’s a hundred companies that are listing, say 50, $100 million are being bought by these bigger companies and they’re creating so much wealth driving housing demand in California, New York. Last but not least, you look at the job growth that’s happening in Texas in the southeast corridor. You know, each one of these factories hires between 2 to 5,000 people. And last but not least, deficit spending, which I’ll explain further in the next slide. So definite deficit spending. So we all know we are spending more than we make. So what does that mean? A lot of that, you know, a lot of that spending is going to chase scarce assets like bitcoin gold and US Real estate.

28:28
Speaker 1
And in the last Fed cut, more importantly than the Fed cut, they said that they are going to end quantitative tightening, which means they’re going to open the faucet back up and quantitative easing again. So you’ve got deficit spending, quantitative easing and lower rates. Housing prices are going to skyrocket. So while everybody focus on fed funds rate that monetary mechanism, transmission mechanism isn’t as impactful as quantitative easing and deficit spending. Next slide. So I just did this for fun. Our research team came up with $500,000 before we had ChatGPT. I asked it how many total direct and indirect jobs will be created over the next 10 years by the Chips Act Scargate AI and EV and technology related industries. High scenario 2.3 million jobs. Low scenario of 800,000 jobs.

29:27
Speaker 2
Right?

29:28
Speaker 1
That is done. If you think about it, you know, Dubai is a hot market. You know, you’ve got other, you know, some of your parts of Europe are really hot because it’s golden visa related or it’s second home related. The US is just an economic machine, right? And this, the U. S no other country is like this where you know, people can flock to certain it’s too. You don’t have job opportunities in California, you move to Texas and you work for one of these factories and you make, you and your wife combined can make 150,000 or 200,000 and you’re still renting. Maybe you can buy. But this is incredible and this is the real, you know, economic engine that is creating this demand, that increase of rental yields. Next slide.

30:14
Speaker 1
All right, so I’m going to give you the secret sauce on how all the richest people in the US make money by creating an cash ATM. Follow me here. You have a five hundred thousand dollar home and home prices are increasing 10% per year. Now you call us, we give you a mortgage for $375,000 at 75% loan to value at 7%. That’s indicative only. So you put down 125,000 bucks and you’re getting 10% rental yield. And I would argue that could be even low, right? This is gross yield by the way, not net and that’s increasing 5% per year. So basically what happens is your home value goes from 500 in year three, it’s 665,000 bucks, right? But over those three years you have collected $108,000 in net income. That means rental income minus your mortgage.

31:10
Speaker 1
Now I haven’t included maintenance and all that stuff. So what happens after year three? Year three you call us and say hey, what are rates now? Oh well now they’re 5%. Oh cool, let’s refinance 60% at the higher value. So your home price is now $665,000. We give you a loan against that, right? 60%. So that’s $400,000. You take the $400,000. Pay back, you know, the existing loan of $375,000. And guess what? You’ve got $24,000 in your pocket. The house is free, right? So, next slide. What happens after that?

31:53
Speaker 2
This.

31:54
Speaker 1
It’s an infinite rental yield because you can’t divide anything by zero. So you are printing 150,000, you know, over the next three years. And this is the game in the U.S. this is how the richest play the game, right? You put this into an llc, you can deduct taxes, there’s some depreciation tricks that you can, you can, you can use. But this is the game that’s played. Debt is not taxed in the U.S. it’s a cash flow game. And with. With prices going up and rates coming down, your margins expand because you can always come to us and refinance at a lower rate. Next slide. So this is, this is. This is super important because when people think about property, they are. They have the hat of. This is my primary residence, so I’ve got to get the cheapest rate.

32:43
Speaker 1
But when you’re investing, that’s not what you should be focused on. Because, because you know, when you’re with primary residence, you’re not getting any cash. You’re not renting it out. And I would argue, I would submit to you that price is more important than rate. I’m gonna give you. I’m gonna prove this to you. Now, this same home, right, for $500,000, you borrowed $350,000. At 7%, your monthly mortgage is 2,300 bucks. Okay, fine. Let’s say, Donald. Oh, it’s rates 7%. It’s so expensive. I’m gonna, I’m gonna wait till they come down. The Fed is cutting rates next year. Okay, listen, I can’t force you. I would say that’s a bad decision, but I can’t force you. November 6, 2026. Hey, Donald. Rates are 6%. Let’s get that mortgage. Okay, well, the home price has gone up 10%. It’s $385,000.

33:39
Speaker 1
And your monthly mortgage is 2,371. Your monthly mortgage has actually gone up. Now, here’s what the smart guy did. He listened to us and he got the.

33:51
Speaker 2
He.

33:52
Speaker 1
He bought the home at 350,000. At 7%. A year from now, he calls us and says, donald, what’s the rate? Well, it’s 6%. Oh, that’s awesome. Let me refinance 350,000. You refinance at 6% is 2,000. Your monthly has gone down 12%. This is what people don’t understand the rate really because they’re thinking primary residence. You got to think cash flow. If I had to borrow money at 10% and I can make 100%, I would borrow at 10% all day, every day. Okay, so this is the mental trick that you need to think about to get over this. Always waiting for the low rate because you’re going to lose out on the, on the property price. Next, next slide. All right, over to you, Robert.

34:47
Speaker 2
Thanks, Donald. Super interesting stuff. You know, actually I was very surprised at the number of students from Asia that are attending school in the US in comparison to other countries, especially Canada.

35:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, listen, you know, the U.S. this is not a discussion on the quality of education in the US I would argue it’s the best in the world. Just because I went there. I think it’s just, it has more schools and you know, it’s an aspirational, it’s like buying a LV handbag. Like you make money, you want your kids to go to the U.S. you know, it’s a luxury item, you know, and it’s the best in the world.

35:33
Speaker 2
Very, very interesting. So, so I will, I’ll continue on with the slides. Basically talking about what is America? Mortgages. I’m sure most people that are on this webinar are already very familiar with us. But you know, what makes us unique? And I think if you look at everything in its entirety, 100% of our clients are foreign nationals and US expats. They’re exactly like you. That’s watching currently on our webinar. We don’t deal with anybody living in the US and it makes us actually quite specific and very in tuned to what you need as a foreign national investor or US Expat investor. We are a direct lender and we’re also a broker. So with that we are able to source the best loan programs and the best terms that actually meet your requirements.

36:29
Speaker 2
And of course, you know, nobody wants to stay up at three in the morning, you know, whatever time you’re in, talking to somebody in New York and trying to explain, you know, maybe why Hong Kong doesn’t have a zip code. So we work in your time zone and often in your language if it’s required. So again, what makes us unique, we accept foreign income and international credit if required. I think if you’re a US expat and you’ve gone through the process of buying A property and you get pre approved from a bank, as soon as they find out that you have foreign earned income, it’s a no go. And I would say probably 20% of our business comes from this where borrowers that are US expats been banking with banks for many years and it just falls out.

37:18
Speaker 2
So again we’re a direct lender, so we lend our own funds down from 100,000 all the way up to two and a half million. And then if there’s anything that sort of falls outside of what we’re able to do, we have the ability to broker it, which gives us a very competitive 97 or close to 98% success rate when it comes to approvals. Of course, like all of our loan programs, no U.S. credit is required unless you’re a U.S. expat. And of course no Social Security number or ITIN is needed. There’s no requirement unless you’re from a country that really doesn’t have easy access to the US but we give you the guidance of how to navigate this.

38:09
Speaker 2
Again because 100% of the people that we are seeing, we likely have already seen your scenario and if there are issues, we’re going to know how to deal with it. Again, our extremely high approval rate and a lot of that not just is because we accept and understand foreign income and so forth, but it’s because we have the loan programs and we are a direct lender ourselves. Multi, you know, multi currency assets, income certainly not an issue. We deal with a lot of private bank referrals. So we have a lot of clients that have, you know, multi jurisdiction tax returns or very complicated tax returns. So we have a special team that does this and it’s absolutely easy to access, you know, through any of our loan officers. Fast pre approval. Once you submit your documents, you know, time is money.

39:09
Speaker 2
We can normally issue you a pre approval letter if you’re looking to purchase within 24 to 48 hours. And I think again the uniqueness of what we have is a lot of our business comes from foreign brokers or bankers that have clients that require our services and are very aware that most US banks won’t allow this type of foreign lending. So we have a way to be able to filter in if you do have clients that you know, we can find a spot or a mortgage for them which actually works. And again, tailored investments. Which means whether you have a Property that’s worth $150,000 in Texas or you have a penthouse in New York that’s worth $50 million. We have loan products that can cover it all. So how we’re positioned first, our peers, certainly there is other competition out there.

40:18
Speaker 2
There are people that we like to say that have sort of mimicked or copied us and they’re still trying to catch up to where we’ve already been successful over the last four years. But they’re, they still do not meet all of the requirements that we feel as a company is important for our clients as, again, as foreign nationals or expats or people living abroad. The biggest problem, and this is more directed to anybody that might be a private banker that’s watching or a client advisor is outside of the U.S. there’s really no distribution of U.S. mortgages. If again, if you were to go, I’ll just give you an example in Singapore, if you were to go to a local bank in Singapore, certainly you can get a mortgage in the UK or Australia, wherever it may be.

41:11
Speaker 2
But the one, I guess location that’s lacking is the US and this is where we’re kind of filling that vacuum. So as a client advisor, you have a way to be able to service your client and value add to your client. So what we know is, and again, this goes towards the client advisor thing is, you know, they trust an expert that understands the requirement of overseas borrowers. You know, we’re not, this isn’t a side gig for us. We’re not, you know, doing regular mortgages for some guy that, you know, works at a department store in the US and is trying to buy a primary residence. 100% of our business is this very specific, very niche focus. So it allows us to offer a better experience. Loan officers speak multiple languages and again, in their time zone.

42:07
Speaker 2
But we always treat every transaction with the ultimate transparency and disclosures. So you are fully aware of what you’re getting into from day one all the way up until closing. If you’ve been on our site or you’ve applied for a loan on us, you’re going to be able to see and use our online portal. This is a secure portal that allows you to complete the application online, securely upload your documents, be able to speak to your loan officer if necessary, and to be able to follow the process from day one all the way to closing. So we’ll go over the loan programs that are available now. Certainly likely you may come across something that doesn’t fit here. We can offer bespoke products.

43:02
Speaker 2
If you have something that’s very specific, certainly it’s still worth a call and we can see, you know, what we can do to solve the situation. So in general, our U.S. mortgage overview and some of this is covering, you know what makes us unique. But we’ll do purchases, we’ll do refinances, and we’ll do equity releases. If you’re foreign national, you can get up to 75% financing with no US credit. If you’re a US expat, we try to make this as if you were living and working in the US and walking into a bank. Same rates, same programs, up to 80% financing. What makes the US very unique to every single country, I believe in the world that where you can get a mortgage is there is no age restriction.

43:49
Speaker 2
So certainly you cannot discriminate, excuse me, you cannot discriminate against anything in the US and age is one of them. So, so you can get a 30 year amortization regardless of the borrower’s age. We have something that’s very unique and this was really introduced when rates were on the higher side. And as they’re coming down, it’s still, you can still take advantage of it to be able to really increase and juice up that rental yield is it’s a 10 year fixed interest only loan where the rate is fixed for a 10 year period, but you’re only servicing the interest after that 10 year period. You would expect that loan to reset to whatever the current rates are, but it does not. This really allows you forecasting and planning what the mortgage payments are.

44:45
Speaker 2
This rate will turn into a principal and interest loan and depending on which loan program it is, it’s either for another 20 years or for another 30 years. So it really gives you the benefit of seeing a much harder, much higher ROI on your property throughout the entire time that you own it. Of course, we have loan programs in all 50 states and I think again, if most of you have dealt with one of our loan officers before, in the past, we underwrite our loans with common sense underwriting, meaning we qualify the loans based on the cash flow or the income that can be earned from the property and not your personal salary. It’s absolutely the smartest way to qualify a mortgage. And this is something that we do all day, every day.

45:37
Speaker 2
In the event that, say, you know, you’re not buying it for an investment property, or maybe the rents don’t cover exactly what was needed for the mortgage, taxes and insurance, then we can take foreign income and we have a very simple way of doing that which is based on an income letter rather than tax returns. So of course, all of our borrowers are either non US citizens or they are US expats living abroad. There is no US residency or even footprint required. And this is all dry lending. So if you’re familiar with lending in Europe and you’re going to have to open up a bank account, this is all dry lending, meaning there is no requirement to have a bank account within the fund or the bank or the lender that’s offering this mortgage in process.

46:30
Speaker 2
In general, once we receive your documents, we say loan approval in 72 hours. But normally we can spit this out quite a lot faster. 30 to 45 days closing, and you can sign your closing documents and actually start your application without ever having to travel to the US and there’s a variety of ways of doing this. And you know what I talked about a couple times and something that we’re very proud of is 97% of our loan applications that are received are approved. And in the event they’re not approved, it’s normally not a borrower issue, it’s something with the property. There’s a phone number on the bottom here and it’ll also be repeated at the very end.

47:19
Speaker 2
But if you call that number 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you will reach somebody that you’ll be able to answer any questions or discuss any loan scenarios. So our loan programs that we feature through American Mortgages, our most popular program is the AM Rental Coverage Loan. This loan is fantastic because it’s based, again, on common sense underwriting. You do not need to provide your personal income documents. Everything that is used to qualify on the loan comes from either the existing rental agreement or it comes from when we order the appraisal, we order a supplement with that appraisal. And that supplement will basically tell us what the qualified rent would be for that property, and that’s what’s used to qualify for the loan. So it’s absolutely a fantastic program.

48:15
Speaker 2
Super easy to qualify for up to 75% financing for a foreign national, 80% for a US expat. So if you look at the bottom, you can see an example of how this works. When we say that it needs to cover the mortgage, what we’re saying is it needs to cover the principal and interest, taxes and insurance. Now, as long as the mortgage covers that on a one to one basis, then you’re going to be able to get excellent pricing and excellent terms and say it doesn’t. In the event there are programs that we have that’ll actually even go below the one to one ratio. Next one is our very popular program and what I had explained where we see a lot of fallout.

49:03
Speaker 2
Again, it’s just very natural for somebody to go to their US expat, they’re living in Germany, wherever it may be, and they go to their local bank or their, their major bank that they’ve dealt with, you know, since they graduated from college, only to find out going halfway through the process that because they’re earning their income in euros or pounds or whatever it may be, that they no longer qualify. With us that’s absolutely not the case. We’ve designed this program to be very specific for our clientele. But there’s some uniqueness to this. So we do not require W2. So if you work for a foreign company, certainly they’re not going to issue you a W2 and that’s perfectly fine with us. You do still need to maintain US credit.

49:54
Speaker 2
We would like to see at least a 640 credit score to be able to get the best pricing in the programs. But the way to look at this is exactly how it would be looked at if again if you were living and working in the US where you’re going to be qualifying on the debt to income ratio, that debt to income ratio is 43%. And the way that you can see the visual on here is as long as you’re, we’re going off of your gross income so this pre taxed income and we’re going to use a 43% basis. If you’re buying it as a second home, the only other debt that would be counted against this would be the, your residence in the country that you’re living in. So it’s a very simple process.

50:41
Speaker 2
All of our loan officers are very good at explaining this. So if you are a US expat and you are running into these issues, just you know, no, it’s not an issue with us AM investor. So as we’re seeing rates coming down, we don’t really see this so much as an issue. But if you’re looking to buy a more expensive property that may not debt service. So say you want to buy something that’s you know, north of a million dollars, you know, you may not be able to get the rent to cover the mortgage payment on that. So we would have to kind of work out the numbers. But if you wanted to, you could use your foreign earned income to qualify.

51:21
Speaker 2
But with this again, just like our common sense underwriting for the cash flow loan this one, if were to take tax returns, you know, from we’re doing loans for clients all over the world, whether they’re in Shanghai or they’re in Sydney. If were to go through the tax returns, as you can imagine, it’d be a very complicated, very difficult process. So rather than asking for your tax returns, we’re just going to want your accountant if you’re self employed, or your employer if you are employed, to write a letter. And we have a template for this which states two years of income and current year to date, that is all we’re going to require. And that will allow us to qualify based on as if you were to apply using your tax returns.

52:03
Speaker 2
Fantastic loan program allows you to be able to qualify for bigger loans or loans that maybe you’re not going to actually rent the property. Again, this has to qualify on a debt to income basis, but it’s very similar to what the US Expats are. Okay, So I had mentioned earlier, we do see a lot of referrals from private banks. So again, private banks or most private banks, they don’t offer us mortgages, but they need to be able to service their client and provide a product that is viable. So we’ve created this loan program that has been absolutely amazingly well received across, you know, from Europe to Asia. What this does is, as you can imagine, high net worth clients, again have very complicated tax returns, multiple jurisdictions, etc. We’re not going to ask for your tax returns.

53:05
Speaker 2
All we want to see is your liquid assets. The liquid assets would be cash in the bank, stocks, bonds, that kind of stuff. We’re going to use an average, depending on the fixed rate portion of the loan. In this example, we’re going off of a 60 month or a 5 year fixed portion amortized over 30 and that 5 years will average out what the amount is in the. So say as an example, you have $5 million, we’re averaging out over 60 months. We have a net income of 83,000. As long as the mortgage is below that, then the loan qualifies. So as a high net worth client, this is probably going to be the easiest loan that you’ve ever qualified for.

53:50
Speaker 2
And what makes again what makes this unique again is, you know, because this is dry lending, there’s no requirement to move that $5 million into a bank account. And then the day after this loan closes, you’re going to be able to sell that, you’re going to be able to trade it, you’re going to be able to do what you want there’s not going to be any encumbrance on those funds. So fantastic way to qualify. Very simple, very straightforward global bridging loans. You know, I think Donald and I will talk a little bit about this on our outlook discussion at the very end. But these are becoming more and more popular. Banks in general are broken. The unwillingness to be able to extend credit for a variety of reasons is becoming more and more common.

54:46
Speaker 2
And then also there’s a lot of people that just don’t need the hassle. They need to be able to access liquidity quickly, easily and based only on the asset value. So America Mortgages and Global Mortgage Group offers asset based bridge loans pretty much across the world in most major countries. So it’s easy to access liquidity quickly and easily without the hassles of financials. And this would be based purely on the property value. And we can normally, depending on the location, normally get up to 70% loan to value fairly easy. So on this, on the global bridging loans, you know, a lot of people, especially we’re based in Singapore, Donald and I, and borrowing rates are extremely low, right.

55:41
Speaker 2
So a lot of people would say, you know, why would I, why would I borrow at, you know, a higher rate when I can just go to the bank? And there’s a variety of reasons to do it, but normally it’s somebody that needs to move quickly and the cost of funds that we’re offering is much lower than the return that they’re going to get. And I think some common uses of this is, you know, basically somebody is looking to require fast funding for an investment or business opportunity. They want to bring funds back for their own working capital. Perhaps they want to acquire a property, same as cash. So you know, we can do these transactions, you know, on average anywhere from five to 10 days or maybe depending on the country, a little bit longer.

56:26
Speaker 2
But when you put an offer in on a property and you’re coming in with cash, normally you have the power to be able to negotiate real estate developments, renovations, you know, perhaps maybe you want to buy a golden visa, you want to pay for the, your kids tuition or healthcare expenses. So whatever it may be, when you explain it to our team, we’re able to structure this in a very bespoke way to be able to not only get you the cash when you need it, but to be able to make sure that it’s specific from your requirements from the entry into this loan to the exit out of it. So with that said, Donald, I think most people have probably Tuned in just to kind of hear what our outlook is for 2026.

57:17
Speaker 2
I think we’re both on the same page, although I think we have a little bit of a different view. But you know, why don’t you hop on in and give me or give us your outlook of what you think is going to happen in 2026 to the US real estate market. And, and I’ll jump in with some questions.

57:36
Speaker 1
Sure, sure. Thanks Robert. Amazing. Thank you for that insightful presentation as always. So I my background, I was a hedge fund manager for many years. We still are pretty active in a pretty active investment book with macro thesis. So, you know, my view is that everything’s going up, right? So every, all hard assets are going up, you know, whether gold, bitcoin and US real estate. But the US real estate in particular has a lot of, you know, things going for it that it didn’t have last year. Like this AI boom is serious. You know, we just met one of our clients bought a house in San Jose and for 1.5 and he sold it now, so that was June, so.

58:21
Speaker 2
Less.

58:24
Speaker 1
So a year and what a few months he sold it for 2.2. So he’s made 700000 US like that’s 50 return. And he’s like, you know, he bought it from, you know, when people make money, they either pay down debt or they buy a new house. So this one, you know, I think, you know, the Fed fund rates are coming down. I think interest, you know, mortgage rates should come down. We hope they do. I think they will. But you know, that’s not, you know, we all think that, but I know what for, so I feel a lot more confident in saying with deficit spending. So that’s your focus on the interest rates. I think they’ll come down. I don’t know how much, we hope a lot more.

59:08
Speaker 1
But you know, that, you know, interest rates coming down is the result of, you know, if things are good in the world, rates don’t come down. Right. So you know, you’ve got this AI overhang people. It’s hard to get jobs, you know, entry level, they’re disappearing. So rates are coming down to promote that. But what’s, I feel more confident in telling you that even if rates don’t come down, which I think they will, prices are going up, you know, easily 10 to 15% next year alone in these key markets because one, the US is hot again. There’s nobody in the world that is wealthy that doesn’t have something connected to the US if you’re wealthy investing in funds, U.

59:55
Speaker 1
S growth funds, tech funds, real estate, investment funds, Nvidia like everything’s, the US Is becoming more of a center of the universe and that added demand is just pushing asset prices up and there’s not enough homes, you know, so, you know, as a landlord, I’ll give you something, you know, give you a homework exercise. Everybody out there, I want you to go home. You’re probably at home right now or at work. I want you to Google Blackstone buying single family homes in the U.S. now, we can all agree Blackstone’s much smarter than all of us on this call because they’ve just got a big budget and they see what I see. They see that, you know, they’re cornering demand to drive up rental yields.

01:00:36
Speaker 1
So the old way of thinking, I’m going to buy property and I hope it goes up and we’ve all done well. The new way of thinking, it’s going to go up but you’re going to get a lot of cash flow. Like, you know, we can, I can pull up Zillow and throw a Dart, you know, five darts and hit five, five properties that rent with rental yields between 10 and 15%. It’s insane. So yeah, that’s kind of my view, Robert. I think, I think property prices are going up. I think it’s going to be fueled by, you know, all sorts of different reasons. So we’ve got this window to really make some money and you know, take advantage of this incredible investment opportunity in U. S. Real estate.

01:01:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, no, I, I absolutely agree, Donald. And, and I think, I mean this is my, I guess political belief on this is, you know, Trump is going to want, whether you like him or dislike him, it’s irrelevant. But he’s going to want to go out on top when he leaves. So part of that is going to be forcing down interest rates. And when he does this, all of these people that have been sitting on the side, these non sophisticated real estate investors that haven’t been buying are going to flood into the market. As soon as that happens, we’re going to see what we saw during COVID where you’ll have 10 people bidding on the same property. And you know, much like the slide that you showed earlier, you’re going to be wind up overpaying for a property.

01:01:54
Speaker 2
So you know, we’re suggesting and we’re recommending that if you are still on the fence and you’re just watching rates, it’s the wrong advice. You should look at buying now. If you can buy cheap and you still have the advantage of being in a buyer’s market rather than a seller’s market, you have a lot of leverage. And once everybody that’s kind of on the peripherals and sitting on the sidelines rush in, you’re going to see an immediate pump in equity. And when interest rates go down, you can always refinance. Now, as everybody probably on this call is somewhat aware that, you know, investment properties and whether you’re a U S Citizen or a U. S. Expat is going to have a prepayment penalty. But that’s fine. We can figure out a way that you’ll be able to see when you can recoup your cost.

01:02:51
Speaker 2
So that’s my feeling on the 2026, certainly you can wait, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I would try to get into the property market if you are, you know, on the fence to get in as soon as possible. And this is, we have a lot of data, you know, Donald’s team, they crunch data all day, they’re pulling up, you know, where’s the best market to buy, where’s the highest rental yield, where’s the possibility of, you know, appreciation on this property. So if you need anything on that, you can reach out to Donald directly on it. He can, he can send you some details. And again, you know, we discussed this earlier, we pointed out this earlier, but within the chat there is a link to be able to speak to one of the loan officers on your time and your convenience.

01:03:41
Speaker 2
So you can schedule it in there or you can call. So I think we have a lot of questions that have kind of been building up through this webinar. And for the essence of time, let me discuss this. What we’ll do is we’ll read the questions and then Donald and I will answer it, whoever it’s relevant for. There is something too that we just launched. This is the first time that we’ve had this, it’s a poll, so you should maybe see this pop up on your screen and it’s just something that you can answer and I think it’ll give us a better idea of, you know, if we’re addressing these webinars in the right way. So please feel free to answer that. If you have any questions, you know, let us know.

01:04:28
Speaker 2
So first question, can I do a cash out refinance to release equity and reinvest before the 2026 market upswing? So, yeah, I mean, if that’s what you feel you’re going to see an upswing. And I think everybody is sort of on that same belief. Absolutely. You know, a refinance loan takes, depending on the type of loan program, but takes approximately 30 days. So it’s quite easy to get it done. Next question. I’m based overseas. What’s the easiest way to start investing in U. S. Real estate through America Mortgages? Donald, you want to answer that one? I can answer that.

01:05:12
Speaker 1
What’s the easiest way to start investing?

01:05:14
Speaker 2
I think.

01:05:16
Speaker 1
Well, first, the first step is speak to us, speak to our team. But generally the sequence of events are we’re going to tell you what are you going to want to buy it for? And you’re probably going to say, I want to get in the game. I love that slide where after three years I’ve got this free cash flow machine and we’re happy to help. Right. So the first step is talk about the loan programs. I will guide you on how to look for the information. Now I think with AI platforms it’s a lot easier because location is very personal. Like for me, I’ve got property in the US I will not change more than two times on a plane to go look at the property on the summer. So I’m not going to buy. So it, so that’s something important to you.

01:06:00
Speaker 1
Do you want to buy it near a relative? Do you want to buy it near, you know, a Chinatown or you’re just going for a high rental yield. So everybody is a little bit different. But generally speaking is we connect you with a tax advisor so you have an idea of how it works, which you’ll find out is a lot easier than you expect. Number two, we set up an llc. We prefer Wyoming because it’s super cheap and we can connect you with a service provider. But once that’s done, you go, we go shopping, right? And we’ve got a shopping list of 800 homes in the US across the nation, ranked by rental yield. Just contact us, we’re more than happy to send you that link.

01:06:38
Speaker 2
Right?

01:06:39
Speaker 1
And then you can just go shopping. You know, it’s like we’re all, we all go on Lazada and Amazon and you know, we buy things on Amazon. But in the US There’s Zillow, there’s Adam Redfin, and it’s like shopping, you know, and then, you know, after a while you get used to what the prices look like and they sh. You know, and then you, you arrange to go to the US we’ll teach you tricks on how to negotiate and stuff like that. And then you get started. I mean like anything in life, you just have to do it.

01:07:09
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you, Donald. Next question. Can you explain the difference between full Doc and a no doc loan option for non resident borrowers? That is a very good question. So as it sounds, a full doc loan is basically all of your financials, your tax returns, your pay statements, whatever, maybe bank statements in order to qualify. Normally that is going to be used if someone is buying a second or a holiday home that is exactly like you would probably apply for your alone in your home country. A no doc loan. It’s not really a no doc loan. A no doc loan was, you know, back in the, in the subprime days. This is a low doc loan. So a low doc loan is what I had talked about earlier. It’s qualifying off of the rental income of the property and not your personal income document.

01:08:09
Speaker 2
So you’re going to provide bank statements and passport and so forth. And then that will be used to show that you have the down payment and you have the ability to pay closing costs and so forth and potentially reserves. So next question, if the best time to buy is before 2026, when should I ideally start my financing or pre approval process? So now it’s, you know, it takes 24 to 72 hours is what we say. It depends on the loan program that you’re looking for. If you’re buying, you know, a second home or a holiday home, it could be a little bit longer because there are more documents that are required.

01:09:00
Speaker 2
But if you’re looking to buy an investment property, really all you need to show is that you have the 25% down payment if you’re a foreign national or 20% if you’re a US expat, you have at least six months of reserves. And when I say reserves, all I’m saying is that you have in some account somewhere, even a retirement account, that you have six months of mortgage payments somewhere. And once you have all that, you go into our portal, you apply for the loan, we’ll spit you out a pre approval letter and you have that pre approval letter, you can start shopping. So again, if you’re thinking about waiting and seeing where rates go and you know, so is everybody else that is unsophisticated and you know, you don’t want to be competing against them.

01:09:47
Speaker 2
Next question, how does a three year payback model work in real terms and what kind of rental yield or cash Flow should I expect. I think that’s referring to the slide that you had, Donald.

01:10:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, I’m not quite sure what real, I’m not quite sure what this question is, but it says in real terms, does that mean inflation adjusted? I wouldn’t, I’m not quite sure.

01:10:09
Speaker 2
Maybe. But.

01:10:13
Speaker 1
The 3 payback, I’m not, I could probably send you the slides. I’m not quite sure how to answer that. The, the, the three year payback was based on 10% rental yields. Right. So, and cash flow would, I expect so you’d get 30,000. And maybe it’s easier you email me and I can send you the slide because I’m not quite sure how to answer it. It’s, Yeah, I think 10% rental yields according to the slide and it’s $30,000 net cash flow, not including maintenance and tax and stuff like that. But if you’re talking about in real terms, that means inflation adjusted, I wouldn’t know. I could, I guess you got 10% minus inflation was 3,4%. So if that’s what you mean.

01:10:59
Speaker 2
So you’re the person that posted this? Posted as anonymous, but if you want to email us directly, you can see.

01:11:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, happy to send the slide over for you to see.

01:11:12
Speaker 2
Okay, next question. I think somebody looking for a partnership, we will reach out to you.

01:11:21
Speaker 1
Oh yeah, met Edward before. We’ve, we’ve been talking for a while.

01:11:29
Speaker 2
Good to hear.

01:11:29
Speaker 1
Good to see you again, Edward.

01:11:31
Speaker 2
Next question. Can America Mortgages help me compare financing scenarios? For example, buying a new property versus refinancing my existing one? Absolutely. But no, I think we can do even a little bit more than that. I, you know, I think the one thing, and again if you’re living outside of the US you may not be so aware of this, but there are no restrictions on the amount of mortgages that you can have at, you know, high loan to values or whatever loan to value you’re comfortable with. But there are no restrictions on loan to values or the amount of mortgages that you can have.

01:12:07
Speaker 2
So the, you know, in your question, one of the unique things that we can do, and this is actually very common for a lot of our clients that tend to build big portfolios is after six months of owning the property, you’re able to refinance that property not at what you purchased it for. And if so if you made some improvements or the property has just increased in value, you’re able to refinance it at the current value. So after six months, you can refinance that property, you can pull the equity back out, and then that is up to 65% loan to value. But then you can get a mortgage, if you’re a foreign national, you know, back up to 75% for the purchase. So you can pull cash out of one to use for the purchase of other.

01:12:56
Speaker 2
And, you know, this is really how you start building those portfolios.

01:13:01
Speaker 1
So there’s one here that we’ve gotten. Do you provide sourcing services, rental management, sales, full real estate cycle tax advice, iht, which I assuming means inheritance tax structure under LLC or personal name. I’m a Singaporean citizen. Okay, let me take that. So we are, we provide referral to those providers. You know, a lot of times the property, because the US Is so big, right? You know, there’s not one global property manager. They tend to be kind of neighborhood or city. And so we can introduce you to our realtor partners that can introduce you to their property managers in that jurisdiction. We can introduce you to tax advisors that we work with closely. Inheritance tax, that’s a different service provider that tends to be law firms, which we also have. We always recommend using an llc.

01:14:06
Speaker 1
It’s cheap, it’s easy to set up, but that’s a personal decision. With an llc, it limits your personal liability. Especially if it’s a rental home. There are a lot of things that are not in your control. Like, you know, it’s ice on your driveway and somebody slips and maybe hits their head somewhere. And then, you know, what you want to do is limit your liability to you as a person. But more importantly, as an llc, you are recognized by the tax authorities as a business and you’re in the business of collecting rent. So what that means is like any business, you’ve got income, revenue and expenses, and so you can deduct the expenses off of your revenue. What are some of the expenses? Marketing, advertising, you know, even your flight to the US to go visit the property. It can be deducted.

01:14:55
Speaker 1
So these are all things. It’s probably a longer conversation. Welcome to call me to discuss how this all works. But you’re thinking the right way and more than happy to help you.

01:15:07
Speaker 2
Okay, next question. I am ready to move forward. What is the first step? Should I schedule a consultation or start my application right away? So if you have a link and you’ve spoken with one of our loan officers, certainly you can start the process. As soon as you do the application, we get a notification and they. The loan officer will reach out to you. But I would suggest that if you haven’t spoken with a loan officer before or you haven’t spoke with them in a while, is just catching up to see. We’re always adding enhancements to our loan programs. Certainly there’s been some, you know, some positive move in rates. So it’s probably good just to get familiar with it.

01:15:53
Speaker 2
Once you speak to the loan officer and you get comfortable, then they’re going to send you the link for their application and then the process goes from there. So one last question. It says, well, refinancing. What is the cost for refinancing, please? That’s a good question. I think the easiest way to, are, the simplest way to explain it is probably around 3% of what the loan amount is. And that would cover everything from, you know, our fee to refinance it to appraisal costs, the title, insurance, etc. But one thing that we can do, and so it makes sense to you, and were doing this, you know, during the COVID time almost on a daily basis because rates just kept coming down and you’d see the same people like refinancing again. Refinancing again.

01:16:47
Speaker 2
We have a fairly straightforward process that shows you the time that it would take to recover the cost of refinancing. And if it makes sense to you, then, you know, it’s absolutely the smartest thing to do. And again, if you’re looking to pull out cash to take advantage of buying properties now before the upswing, smartest thing you can do. And we’re seeing this again from people that are really our seasons, our seasoned clients and seasoned real estate investors. So that looks like it’s the last question. Donald, do you have any parting words to.

01:17:22
Speaker 1
No, I think, listen, you know, not understanding the US Real estate and if you are interested in real estate, investing in general is like investing in crypto and not knowing about bitcoin. Like it is the best real estate market in the world. Nothing com, nothing even comes close over the long term because the, the system wants to be your partner to make money. It’s not like that in any other country. Right. So while other countries could be flavor of the day, which is hot money driven, the US is real economic, you know, industrial reshoring of manufacturing, adding jobs, you know, technology. Like it’s real, real supportive growth driving these prices. So, you know, I would really consider you starting the process now and not postponing because like anything, you know, we’re Going to have this call, you know, same call next year, next.

01:18:24
Speaker 1
Same time next year. And prices will be up 20. And you’ll be like, God, we should have listened to you. So let us help you get started. The first step of anything is always the hardest. But once you take a few steps, you’re like, okay, I got some momentum. I get this. You know, and then once you get one, make some money, feel good, you’ll. I guarantee you’ll start adding to your portfolio.

01:18:45
Speaker 2
Yeah. And I think to add to that, yeah. In many countries where you may be living and watching this, you’re going to see a lot of properties advertised from the UK Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, wherever. Dubai is huge right now, wherever that may be. I think that something to kind of pause and look at, you know, who’s buying this. And when you have a market like that where you need to push it overseas to be able to meet your demand, then that’s a big problem. And if there’s ever any kind of, you know, hiccup in the market, these are the markets that get affected first.

01:19:29
Speaker 2
The reason why you really don’t see US Properties advertised in, you know, a shopping mall in Hong Kong or being, you know, sold in a kiosk in London is the US does not need to go abroad to be able to find, you know, buyers for U. S. Real estate. So it just really, I guess it cements the fact that what Donald had just said, the US Real estate market is the most vibrant and the most demanded in the world. And that’s why there’s $60 billion on average a year that’s purchased only by residential properties by foreign nationals. So with that said, we want to thank you, as always, tuning into our webinars.

01:20:09
Speaker 2
But just in general, being a client of America Mortgages or soon client of America Mortgages, we strive every day to be able to provide you with the tools to be successful in the US Real estate market. It so. So, Donald, thank you know, for joining everybody. Thank you. You either have a good day or a good night. And again, within the chat, please register to speak to somebody if you have not in the past. So thank you.

01:20:37
Speaker 1
Awesome everybody. Have a good evening or good morning wherever you are.

01:20:41
Speaker 2
See. Yep.

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Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated, so kindly pardon any transcription or grammatical errors that may be present.