Building AFC Mortgage Group (2801) | Second generation and run it with my brother! | Bridge Lender | Student Rental Investor 🇺🇸
USA
Joined December 2020
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The sign went up today. Post Road, downtown Fairfield.
We're opening a new office, and the sales team is moving down to it. Monroe stays exactly where it is — that isn't going anywhere. But we wanted the sales floor somewhere with more happening around it.
More foot traffic. More walk-ins. Somebody can stop in off Post Road, ask what they came to ask, and get an answer while they're standing there. That's the whole idea.
And it puts us back where we started. Fairfield Prep is a few minutes up the road. Coming back down here to open a door with our name on it means so much.
Inside is still a construction site — framing's up, plumbing and electrical are roughed in, sprinklers go in next week. But you can walk it now and see the rooms instead of imagining them.
Give it a few weeks. Then come find us on Post Road. We can't wait to see you at the Grand Opening!
AFC Mortgage Group | NMLS #2801 | Equal Housing Lender
Your business, in its best light.
AFC Media Group: films, podcasts and photography for local businesses and real estate agents, New York to Boston.
See the work: afcmediagroup.com
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We did almost as much bridge lending in September as regular mortgages.
A couple of years ago I wouldn't have believed that sentence.
September: 12 traditional loans, $4,996,200. 9 bridge loans, $4,570,000.
Here's what I'm seeing. The buyer shopping on monthly payment backs off when rates move. The buyer who already owns a house doesn't have that luxury. They still need to move. They just can't wait for the old house to sell before they buy the next one.
That buyer isn't rate sensitive. They're timing sensitive.
Buy before you sell. Move once. Sell an empty house on your own schedule.
Most lenders built their business around the first buyer. The second one is the one calling us right now.
If your next move is stuck behind the house you live in, the rate isn't your problem. The order is.
Every extra hour of recruiting saves you ten hours of management.
That line came up on a call last week and I haven't stopped thinking about it.
I learned it the expensive way. We lost four loan officers in about a year.
When you hire fast because you're busy, you spend the next year managing the gap between who you needed and who you got. Coaching what should have been there on day one. Having the same conversation for the third time.
So we slowed down at the front. More conversations before anyone joins. More honesty about how we actually work.
We have another loan officer joining in early November, and we're hiring for a bilingual role right now.
Hiring is the one part of management you only do once per person.
Do it slowly.
"I was like, this isn't happening. I just need to let it go."
That's what a first-time buyer told Trevor last week.
She had opened her Loan Estimate, found the line that says cash to close, and read it as money she needed on top of her down payment.
It isn't. Cash to close already includes your down payment. It's the total you bring to the closing table after your deposit and any credits come off.
She was about to walk away from her first house over a number she was reading wrong.
Trevor stayed on the phone with her for 14 minutes and went through it line by line. By the end she said, "That makes a lot more sense. That makes me feel a lot better."
Here's a little secret about this business: the Loan Estimate is a standard federal form, and almost nobody sits down and explains it.
If a number on yours scares you, don't let it go. Make someone walk you through it.
"ChatGPT found you for me."
That's how a call with Nick started last week.
She was calling about a house in Tennessee. Her mom had tried to buy that same house a year ago, and lost it. The offer was contingent on selling her current home first.
Her description of her mom: "she has some, I don't know, contingency sale based trauma."
This time, she called a bridge lender first.
Here's how it works. You borrow against the house you own, buy the next one without a sale contingency, then sell the old one on your own schedule.
They're early in the process. Nothing is decided yet.
But think about what a sale contingency actually says to a seller. Please take your house off the market and wait while I try to sell mine.
A sale contingency asks the seller to wait. Sellers don't like to wait.
Gaetano Ciambriello retweeted
Premise:
Incentives drive all human behavior.
The corollary:
How to destroy a country:
A vast social security and support system that serves as a magnet for those who would rather not work.
An open immigration policy that does not screen immigrants to determine their ability and willingness to provide for themselves and their families.
An open immigration policy that does not screen for political and/or religious ideologies that are a threat to the country.
Economic incentives large enough to incentivize immigrants on the state dole to have large numbers of children, but insufficient for educated and economically productive mothers to be able to quit to raise a family.
The declining fertility of the most educated and productive women due to their delay to begin a family as a result of their desire and/or need to advance their careers, among other reasons, to live a life they deem consistent with their educational achievements and/or to repay their student debts.
Amnesty programs that give citizenship and voting power to illegal immigrants without consideration of their economic productivity or their threat to the country due to their religious or political ideologies.
The changing demographics and increased population due to the above factors.
The state responding to protests by increasing social support.
The continued failure to punish and hold accountable violent and looting rioters.
Government managed by a massive and growing unelected bureaucracy.
Government fraud, waste, and abuse contributed to ballooning budgets.
Anti-business legislation that makes it difficult for businesses to compete in a global marketplace being disrupted by AI, including restrictions on firing even poorly performing employees.
Overly burdensome, globally uncompetitive, corporate taxation.
Continuous increases in personal taxes to raise funds to provide for the rapidly growing welfare state.
The substantial majority of the tax burden levied on a small percentage of the population.
A growing percentage of the electorate paying no taxes and receiving welfare.
The introduction or threat of a wealth tax including the taxation of unrealized gains, i.e., taxes on paper wealth.
The flight of the most productive business builders and highest taxpayers to lower tax countries with lesser security concerns.
A growing percentage of the electorate voting for candidates that support increased welfare and laws favorable to, and/or that match the cultural and ideological needs and desires of a growing unproductive immigrant population.
The rapid rise in anti-semitism and inadequate efforts to address this hatred.
Increased borrowing by the state to fund the growing social burden.
Higher sovereign interest rates due to all of the above.
The resulting need to reduce expenditures to make the math work.
Increasingly violent protests that make life less livable for the productive and law abiding citizens leading to their accelerated departure.
And so on…
A family found their dream house. It doesn't have a certificate of occupancy.
Gutted to the studs. Mechanicals in, roof done, siding done. No kitchen, no bathrooms, no finished floors. On paper, that's a house a conventional lender won't touch.
Here's the truth nobody says out loud: a house without a CO isn't unfinanceable. It's just financed differently.
We're structuring a bridge — sell their current home, buy the shell with the equity, finish it on their timeline, then refinance into a normal mortgage once it has a CO.
Most buyers walk away from a house like this because their lender tells them no. Ours don't have to.
I walked into Starbucks today and ordered an iced coffee.
Nothing crazy. Just ice and coffee.
8 minutes later, I’m still standing there watching the baristas perform open-heart surgery on a Venti Triple Mocha Loca Frappuccino with almond milk, oat foam, caramel drizzle, two pumps of unicorn tears, and a splash of paprika.
Meanwhile, they’re making 46 drinks for people who aren’t even physically in the building.
Apparently, everyone in a 12-mile radius gets their coffee before the idiot who actually walked into the store.
Then they finally call my name.
14 seconds later, my iced coffee is ready.
EIGHT MINUTES OF WAITING. FOURTEEN SECONDS OF LABOR.
I think I could’ve grown the coffee beans faster. 😂
September, by the numbers.
12 traditional loans closed. $4,996,200 for Connecticut homeowners.
9 bridge loans funded. $4,570,000 for move-up buyers and investors.
21 loans. $9,566,200 total.
Eight of those twelve were purchases. Eight sets of keys.
Behind those numbers: one refinance where a computer decided the borrower had a gap in employment. She didn't. Her employer had been bought by a bigger company and the system couldn't connect the names. We went to the records and to HR, and she closed on time.
That's the job. Not avoiding problems. Catching them before they cost somebody their closing date.
On to October.
We’re making our first dedicated hire for our bridge lending business at AFC Mortgage Group.
When we launched this vertical, I knew we had an opportunity. This year, we’ll fund over $30MM in bridge loans, and next year we expect to do $40MM+.
Now we need someone who wants to help us build it.
We’re hiring an entry-level Investment Analyst who will work directly with me and get exposure to the entire business — underwriting, processing, origination, servicing, portfolio management and eventually helping us build the team around them.
Finance experience is preferred, but not required. I’m much more interested in finding someone smart, hungry, organized and interested in real estate who wants to learn.
One thing I’m especially proud of at AFC is our culture around ownership.
We want our people growing in their careers, but we also want them building wealth and investing themselves. Two of our loan officers recently bought multifamily properties of their own, and I want to see more of that.
If you’re early in your career and want to learn real estate finance by actually doing deals, this is a pretty unique opportunity.
You’re not joining a department.
You’re helping us build one.
Apply below or share this with someone who would be a great fit.
We are gunning for $60MM next year in bridge business!
linkedin.com/jobs/view/44755…
Gaetano Ciambriello retweeted
33 years ago this weekend, two Delta Force snipers made a choice almost nobody would make.
Master Sergeant Gary Gordon was 33, from Lincoln, Maine, with a wife and two young kids at home. Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart was 35, a farm kid from Newville, Pennsylvania.
On October 3, 1993, they were in a Black Hawk circling over Mogadishu when another Black Hawk, Super 64, was shot down. Pilot Mike Durant was alive in the wreckage with a broken back and a crushed leg. His crew was hurt. There were no friendly ground forces anywhere near them, and hundreds of armed militia and locals were already converging on the crash site.
From the air, Gordon and Shughart could see exactly what was coming.
They asked to be dropped in. Command said no.
They asked again. No again.
They asked a third time and finally got the green light.
Their helicopter set them down nearby and they fought their way to the wreck on foot. Two men, carrying only what they had on them. They pulled Durant out of the cockpit, set him up in a safer position, and started holding off the crowd.
For a while, it worked. They kept the mob back with precise, steady fire while the numbers against them kept growing.
Shughart was killed first.
Gordon kept fighting alone. When he was nearly out of ammunition, he went back to Durant, handed him a rifle, and told him good luck. Then he went back out. He was killed minutes later.
Durant was captured, beaten, and held for 11 days. He came home alive. He has said for decades that he's only here because of those two men.
In 1994 Gordon and Shughart were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first since Vietnam. The Navy later named two ships after them, the USNS Gordon and the USNS Shughart.
They didn't stumble into that fight. They watched it from above, understood the odds, and asked three times to go anyway.
Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart. Remember their names.
Gaetano Ciambriello retweeted
This went crazy yesterday with over 1million views, @CoFoundersNik retweeting it followed by @MatthewChang and @RobertMSterling and then blew up.
It kicked off one of the coolest X trends I have ever seen.
Good propaganda about the joy of parenthood. 1/2
Gaetano Ciambriello retweeted
HOLY SHT 🚨 He’s actually going to get away with it. The ANIMAL who k*lled Iryna was ruled unfit for trial after “a mental health evaluation”
THE JUDGE SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED
LOCK THIS ANIMAL UP
Important context on this chart — this is new home inventory, not existing homes.
That matters, especially in the Northeast where a lot of our inventory is existing homes.
Existing homeowners don’t have to sell. Builders do. They have inventory sitting on their balance sheet that they need to move, so they cut prices and offer incentives.
New construction pricing and existing home pricing can tell two very different stories.
BREAKING: The average sales price for a new single-family home fell -$47,700 MoM in August, or -9.1%, to $478,700, the largest monthly drop on record.
This is the lowest level since August 2024 and the 2nd-lowest level since September 2021.
The decline was driven by a shift toward lower-priced homes, as builders cut prices and offered incentives to clear inventory.
This comes as sales of homes under $300,000 rose to 22% of total sales last month from 19%, while sales of homes priced at $1 million+ fell to 4% from 6%.
As a result, total new home sales jumped +6.4% MoM, to 684,000, their highest since December 2025.
Meanwhile, median sales price fell -$24,200 YoY, or -5.8%, to $393,700, the 2nd-lowest reading since July 2021.
US home prices are falling to keep sales alive.
Gaetano Ciambriello retweeted
Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer’s dad narrates a new ad attacking Abdul El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11 and was worse than Al-Qaeda. Watch this.
Gaetano Ciambriello retweeted
My dad died Wednesday at 91. It’s never long enough. In his final hours, we took him from the hospital back to memory care so they could be together. Two months shy of 67 years of marriage.
I don’t want our sales team to just make money selling mortgages. I want them to build wealth.
About to take off for Texas with Nick for a conference, and I was thinking about how much our team has grown — not just professionally, but personally.
Nick recently bought his first multifamily property near the water in New Haven. Great property, great area, great deal.
Trevor is under contract and closing on his first multifamily this week.
That fires me up.
A lot of sales organizations teach you how to sell more so you can earn more. We want to teach our people how to sell, understand mortgages, invest in real estate, and turn their income into assets that build wealth over time.
My goal is that 10–15 years from now, the people who helped build AFC aren’t looking back at just how much they earned — they’re looking at the real estate, investments, and wealth they built along the way.
We’re growing, and we’re going to be adding more people to our team.
If you’re ambitious, competitive, and want to build something bigger than just a paycheck, I’d love to hear from you.
Texas bound ✈️ Let’s keep building. 🚁🚁🚁
