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Cliffco Mortgage

Cliffco Closes Loans for the Modern Day Consumer

In the slow-moving, conservative world of mortgage lending, one institution is breaking the mold and finding new ways to say yes to qualified borrowers.

Cliffco Mortgage Bankers is a direct lending mortgage bank made up of industry professionals who use their experience and knowledge to match borrowers with the right product for their scenario and get deals done. Whether you’re a major real estate investor or first-time home buyer, Cliffco will find the loan product that’s right for you. TRD sat down with Cliffco’s Senior VP of Sales Adam Turkewitz to learn why he thinks Cliffco represents the future of mortgage lending.

An Experienced Perspective

Turkewitz has been in the mortgage banking industry since 2005, and spent the last 16 years at a major institution as a private mortgage banker at a top five lender.

“I funded about $3 billion of residential mortgages,” says Turkewitz, who specialized in “high-end mortgages” for affluent self-employed borrowers. 

While amassing a wealth of experience and clients, Turkewitz began to chafe at the restrictive nature of the major institutional lending philosophy. Not only are large institutions usually “stuck with just one product,” they use filters like credit overlays to screen out large portions of the borrowing population based solely on single data points like their credit score instead of taking into account their entire financial situation. 

It means that borrowers who Turkewitz knew were qualified were being denied. So, he made the move to Cliffco, where he knew his expertise could be best put to use.

“They’re disrupting the business,” says Turkewitz. “They’re taking a look at the way business has been done historically, turning it upside down and shaking it really hard to try to figure out if there’s a better way to go about it.”

The Cliffco Difference

Cliffco is a direct lender that underwrites its own loans. It lends its own money and works with multiple investors and banks to “see who’s providing the best terms on that particular day and for a specific client.” This structure gives Cliffco the ability to lend to a wide range of borrowers by finding the loan product that will meet their needs.

“We can do your traditional, conventional loans,” explains Turkewitz, “but if there’s something about your profile that falls a little outside of what the traditional retail banks want to or can do, we have a whole host of other options.”

Cliffco adjusts its product mix according to local market conditions and client needs. That means taking local specifics into account, like treating New York City real estate as an asset in its own class when considering collateral, as well creating products like their 40-year fixed rate mortgage as a way of opening up home ownership to a larger pool of buyers. It’s not about taking more risks, but rather about using all the analytical tools at their disposal to fit their products to their customers.

Another part of Cliffco’s disruptive strategy is its social media marketing presence. Cliffco created a department to reach out to Millennials and Gen Z on platforms they actually use, expanding the institution’s client base.

“The company has a media department called the Influence Studio,” says Turkewitz. “It’s a platform where we have our own videographers, photographers and editors who create a lot of social media content so that we can market to people in a very different way.”

Not A “One Size Fits All” Bank

To show us how Cliffco is expanding the pool of lenders who can get approved, Turkewitz walked us through a few of the loans Cliffco was able to close with qualified borrowers who were unable to borrow from traditional lenders.

One client, a real estate agent, was turned down by one of the large banks because, even though their 1099 showed $700,000 in income, they could only show about $200,000 net because of “creative” tax strategies they used to limit their exposure to income taxes.

“We were able to look at their 1099, use a 10% expense factor, and then get a year-to-date commission report to show that their income was pacing the same as last year,” recalls Turkewitz. “We used an underwriting income of about $630,000 to qualify them for the loan, and the loan was able to get done no problem.”

Turkewitz and Cliffco were able to save a client’s purchase of their “dream home” through quick action. Larry S. told us how, after their loan was rejected by their existing lender after pre-approval “despite having perfect credit and a strong financial foundation,” Cliffco stepped in and “turned things around in record time.” The result? The client was able to close on their dream home thanks to Cliffco and Turkewitz, who even provided “a better rate than what was offered by the big bank” that rejected them in the first place.

Another client, a real estate investor, came to Turkewitz with a unique borrowing challenge. She had snagged the opportunity to take over a contract from an all-cash buyer for a single-family home on the beach in Connecticut. The only caveat? The seller told her that she had just two and a half weeks to close, an impossible task with traditional financing.

“We have this loan that’s called a debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) loan, where we just underwrite the income based on the cash flow of the property” explains Turkewitz. “So we appraised the property, took a look at the market rent because this is an investment property, and as long as our mortgage expenses held to what the revenue was from that particular property was, we were good.” 

Cliffco was able to close on time and the investor was able to secure the property.

Small business owners are another category of borrowers often left out to dry by large lenders. Turkewitz told us about a bakery owner who wanted to buy a condo near their UES business.

“They opened up their bakery about two and a half years ago, and like a lot of businesses, when they first open up they show a loss because they have to buy equipment and pay other startup costs,” says Turkewitz. 

The bakery owner was denied by three big banks before coming to Cliffco, where Turkewitz was able to look at the revenue deposits from the bakery, take the historical nature of the startup expenses into consideration, and easily extend a loan based on all the information.

“A lot of my clients have more complex situations that don’t necessarily fit the very rigid credit box of a big bank,” says Turkewitz. “At Cliffco, there’s products for everybody across the board.”

Visit Cliffco’s website to learn more.

Adam W. Turkewitz​​​​, Senior Vice President of Sales | NMLS#32900

Cliffco, Inc. is not affiliated with or acting on behalf of the FHA or any government entity. Equal Housing Lender. Cliffco, Inc. Corporate NMLS#65328 (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org)  70 Charles Lindbergh Blvd, Suite 200, Uniondale, NY 11553 (516) 408-7300. This is not a commitment to lend or extend credit. Restrictions may apply. All loans are subject to credit and underwriting approval. Not all loan products are available in all states. Rates may not be available at time of application. Information and/or data are subject to change without notice.