“I love doing deals. Like a lot of people in this business, I’m a deal junkie.”

With management and production positions at Extensia Financial, Grubb & Ellis Company, Meridian Capital, Johnson Capital, FINOVA Realty Capital, Pacific Southwest Realty Services, The Alison Company and Hometown Commercial Capital, Gary Bechtel’s resume practically speaks for itself. But in his current role as the President of Money360, a California-based mortgage lender, Bechtel says his 30+ year career has given him the opportunity to apply the knowledge he has garnered throughout his storied tenure in the mortgage lending space.

Founded in 2014 by current CEO Evan Gentry, Money360 is a vertically integrated, nationwide direct lender that makes small to mid-balance commercial real estate loans of $3 million to $25 million. Located in idyllic Ladera Ranch, Money360 has proven itself as a mainstay in California’s immense lending market, servicing countless borrowers and intermediaries during its admittedly short existence.

In the chaotic aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Bechtel said a shifting marketplace – along with advancements in technology – contributed to a myriad of new business opportunities, including Gentry’s vision for Money360.

“In 2014, the distressed debt business had tapered off, so Evan saw an opportunity in the commercial lending space to bring to bear some of the things he had learned at his previous entrepreneurial ventures,” Bechtel said. “Initially, he raised capital from high net worth, accredited investors and placed that in bridge loans, and that’s really how the business got started.”

With the formation of the company’s first debt fund in 2015, Bechtel said he was brought on soon after.  Throughout his career, he added, he has run and/or expanded commercial real estate businesses as either an intermediary originating loans or running origination platforms or as overseeing lending platforms – and as the business grew, Money360 needed an experienced subject matter expert in the field.

“I was brought on with that interest in mind,” he said. “We began ramping up the business in 2015 and really in earnest in 2016, when we began hiring more origination personnel to generate deal flow and back-office personnel to process the loans. From there, we have grown substantially; I think I was employee number six in 2015, and we now stand at 37 employees. In 2015, we closed the year at approximately $50 million of total volume since inception, we are now at roughly $1.4 billion since inception – this substantial growth has happened over a relatively short period of time.”

Despite the company’s growth during this time, Bechtel said the early days of Money360 were not without their ups and downs.

“Building something from the ground up is incredibly difficult, mainly because you just don’t have any brand recognition,” he said. “I think that’s where the hiring of highly-experienced people comes into play. When we didn’t have that brand awareness, the people we brought on gave us credibility. For the first year of our existence, we were relying on the reputation and credibility of the people we hired. As time went on and we were closing loans regularly, the Company’s reputation as a reliable capital provider was established”

Outside of shifting marketplace ideals and the aftermath of a financial crisis, Bechtel said the success of Money360 thus far can be traced back to one simple factor.

“I think our success is attributable to the team we’ve brought on – one of the things we’ve done since creating the platform is hiring incredibly seasoned, talented people within their specific role in the firm,” he said. “Typically, our people have around 25 years of experience in their specific role. Whether that means you’re an originator, underwriter, processor, closer, or senior management, everyone has decades of experience and billions of dollars in the commercial real estate finance sector, and I think that’s played well with the intermarries and investors we work with.”

It is important to keep in mind, Bechtel added, that experience is meaningless without a proven track record and bar-none attention to an ever-expanding list of clients.

“Credibility in this business is everything,” he said. “If you hire highly talented, highly experienced people who are tenured and have been through the cycles and can draw upon those experiences of structuring and re-structuring loans, again, I think that’s what has separated us from many lenders that are both in the market or have tried to enter the bridge lending space.”

Bechtel said that in the past few years the bridge lending space has seen increased interest – and competition – from startups and established lenders alike. Although he said it is difficult to pinpoint a singular reason for this increase, he added there are a number of factors that have led to the piqued interest of lending professionals. These elements, he said, include the skyrocketing of the CLO (collateralized loan obligation) market and investors becoming frustrated with a lack of opportunity to deploy the capital they have raised.

“A lot of these players have come in knowing that they can make loans on their lines or balance sheets, and ultimately go to the CLO market for liquidity and leverage – I think you’ve seen a lot of people who were in some other aspect of the lending business, be it CMBS, Mezzanine or Equity, and I think for all of the reasons I’ve outlined before, some see the potential that the bridge space provides,” Bechtel said. “My view is that when the business changes, slows down, or they are not able to deploy money in the space, those players won’t be in the business a year or two from now. But companies like Money360 will be here because this is our area of expertise and sole focus: we’re building a platform for the long-run.”

As more lenders enter the bridge lending space, Bechtel said Money360 has thought long and hard about how best to differentiate itself from the competition; although this differentiation can seem quite difficult at times, he said it is a “welcome challenge.”

“It doesn’t always come down to price,” he said. “Some of these new entrants I mentioned try to compete on price and they try and compete, possibly, with higher leverage, so the market has become frothy to a certain degree. Unfortunately, having been through these cycles, this is something reminiscent of what we saw in 2007 in the CMBS [commercial mortgage-backed security] world.”

That world, he said, has some attributes of today’s bridge lending space.

“The business was crowded, there was a lot of money, and there was some very aggressive underwriting and pricing to win business, recognizing they could securitize that product and really have ‘no skin in the game,’” he said. “Although that has changed since there is a minimum risk retention required of an issuer, but my concern – and we’ve already begun to see this with some of the new entrants into the space – is that they are becoming very aggressive on pricing and structure to try and win business and that is fine today, but potentially that could bite them and their investors in the future.”

Although Bechtel said it can be easy to get caught up in what competitors are doing, he added it is crucial to remain steadfast in the principles and practices his company has established.

“What sets us apart, I believe, is what lies between the ears,” Bechtel said. “We’ve been through the cycles – and given our team’s decades of experience – we’ve seen what can happen when you stretch and aggressively underwrite these transactions, so we ‘stick to our knitting.’ If we lose a transaction to someone who is going to come in and aggressively lend or over-lend, as hard as it is to believe, we’re fine with that. We take a long-term approach to this business, and we want to be able to honor our commitment to our borrowers in the future funding obligations we may have and protect our investors as much as we can from any kind of impairment of the loan.”

Aside from the sheer pricing component, Bechtel also said that Money360’s clients have come to expect a level of professionalism from his team, and can sleep soundly knowing that his team will follow through on their commitments. Bechtel said he is proud when prospective and current clients refer to Money360 as a “responsible, reputable” source of bridge lending.

“We’ve established a proven track record with an experienced group of people that have proved themselves over and over again,” he said. “Quite honestly, we wouldn’t have been able to fund as much as we have in such a short period of time if we weren’t reliable and credible . Aside from focusing solely on pricing, it’s our ability to structure the loan as close as we can to the borrower’s ask and mitigate risk as much as possible, but also provide the confidence that we’ll be there for them in the future.”

Another component of the company Bechtel said sets them apart is Money360 proprietary technology platform, 360Live and specifically My360, an interactive client portal designed to create a better transparency of the commercial real estate process. Anyone associated with a loan in closing has access to this portal, enhancing the traditionally painful process of email and drobox.

Up until this point, Bechtel said it has been common practice for the loan process to take place “behind the firewall,” which can not only hinder the borrower/lender relationship but also the origination and processing process as a whole. My360 allows borrowers to track the status of their loan in real time, while also securely uploading documents and other important pieces of information to via computer or mobile devices.

As part of Money360’s branding and educational efforts, Bechtel said he has been fortunate to travel and speak on bridge lending and hear about some of the short-comings of potential competitors – when sitting down with potential clients or the intermediary community. Bechtel said it is important to hear the questions and concerns of the investor while refraining from “bashing” newcomers to the space.

“I will never, nor will anyone in our company, speak badly about one of our competitors as I don’t want to be talked badly about either,” he said. “But we will emphasize to them that pricing and leverage isn’t everything – viability, reliability and staying power are key to a long relationship.”

To Bechtel, that relationship extends not only between a borrower and lender, but between an employee and their company.

“Jumping into a new transaction to try and win it for the firm may seem impossible at times, but it’s incredibly rewarding – we have to realize our strengths and weaknesses, and what we can do in the confines of our own lending platform. Taking Money360 from a smaller enterprise to what it is today has been very satisfying, and that’s partially because we all believe in what we are doing here.”

The relationships between all parties involved – intermediaries, borrower, investors and employees – Bechtel said the validation and recognition of the success that comes with that is rewarding. But despite this vocal support, he said there is “always work to be done.”

“We have very large goals at Money360, and that is something that I took on when I was first hired in 2015 – I think we’ve done a very good job of setting ourselves apart in a very crowded space, and we plan on doing so as we continue building this platform for the future.”