Company owners and other executives often receive compensation for providing a personal guarantee to a commercial loan their investment program is seeking. The size of this personal guarantee fee varies considerably, as does the level of disclosure. We believe the personal guarantor should be compensated, but it must be commensurate with the risk the guarantor is taking on. Drawing upon FactRight’s experience in reviewing private real estate and other alternative investment programs, this blog post focusses on personal guarantees (rather than corporate guarantees), discusses the typical range ..read more

*Olympic Trumpet flair ..read more

With limited success for centuries, astronomers charted the stars with hopes of better understanding the universe until one day when Copernicus suggested that the earth was orbiting the sun. Once his epiphany was fully understood, empires could navigate the globe with unprecedented precision by knowing exactly where they were by looking up at the stars. Today, there is no shortage of cap rate/interest rate correlation theories in our industry. Perhaps more fully understanding commercial real estate cap rates and their orientation to interest rates can aid alternative investors in navigating t ..read more

FINRA recently released Regulatory Notice 23-08, which provides a reminder to FINRA members of their reasonable investigation obligations when selling private placement investments to their clients under Regulation D. The Regulatory Notice marks FINRA’s first substantial discussion of due diligence related to private offerings since Regulatory Notice 10-22, which was released in April 2010, and forms a crucial part of the foundation of broker-dealer due diligence practices in satisfying their reasonable investigation requirements for offering private placement investment opportunities for the ..read more

This blog looks at what unit pricing in an investment program offering means to your investors and how to determine whether such pricing treats all investors “fairly ..read more

We say this every conference, but we are so beyond grateful to all of you for making this Spring RIA Due Diligence Conference in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona such a success! With over 350 total attendees, the FactRight staff cannot be more appreciative of your continued support and participation ..read more

Alternative investments programs involve many conflicts of interest, and offering documents often have an entire risk disclosure section dedicated to this issue. But not all conflicts are the same and vary by product and sponsor. Assessing conflicts really come down to two central questions ..read more

Over the past several years, FactRighthas seen a trend in increased demand for residential real estate investment programs (e.g., multifamily, build-to-rent, single family residences).While our offering-level reports provide a market overview at the MSA-level, I wanted to goa few levels higher to the national scale. This blog primarily looks at the relationship of single-family home prices and income in the United States to answer the following question:What are the implications for residentialreal estate programs if housing is overpriced relative to historic norms?   ..read more

By now, you may be generally familiar with the recent collapse of FTX, and some of the reasons for its failures are obvious. But by examining FTX side-by-side with perhaps the most infamous investment fraud ever perpetrated, we can discover some keys as to why lapses in due diligence may never be a thing of the past. These two epic failures bear little factual resemblance to one another at first glance, but this post will look more closely at the more transcendent lessons they hold ..read more

It should come as no surprise that the old investment adage about getting what you pay for holds true for preferred stock, too. Despite often being pitched as a bond alternative, especially lately, there are multiple factors beyond dividend yield to consider. Among the features, an investor needs to understand are the liquidity provisions, dividend policy, and preferred shareholder rights. Sponsors tend to get irritable when FactRight stress tests their pro forma model or highlights weak investor protections, dismissing the concerns as implicating scenarios highly unlikely to ever occur. Howe ..read more