Well-qualified, wealthy foreign buyers are not getting favorable pricing terms
Pricing on investment loans is something brokers need to consider when working with investor customers. When those customers are foreign-born investors, there are additional considerations.
One thing that brokers might be surprised to see is how some in the secondary market are pricing foreign-born investor loans. One executive is unhappy about how these loans have been priced.
Yuval Golan (pictured top), founder and CEO of Waltz, said that these foreign-born investors are well-qualified borrowers with strong financial profiles. Yet they often see higher loan rates and fees because they are foreign buyers.
Golan said that many of these strong foreign buyers have loan pricing similar to that of lower-income borrowers who are getting loans using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs).
“I’ve been asking consistently to both the secondary market and the rating agencies,” Golan told Mortgage Professional America. “How do you mix up ITIN loans with wealthy foreign nationals, just because you don't have a way to quantify their credit score? It's ridiculous because ITIN borrowers are very different from my clients.”
Not their first purchase
He noted that the issue isn’t with ITIN borrowers, who have worked hard to purchase a home in the United States. It is about grouping people with different loan risks in the same basket because the secondary market doesn’t do its homework.
“ITIN borrowers are hardworking people who also deal with all the political stuff that is happening,” Golan said. “But my clients, for example, are people who work at Google. They're reporters, bankers, people who say, ‘My time is valuable, and I want to build my wealth in the US.’ But the issue is, when the secondary market buys the loans, they all price them in the low-rated credit scores, which is ridiculous.”
Purchasing an investment home in the United States isn’t usually the first asset purchase for these foreign-born investors, Golan said. This is why it doesn’t make sense to him why they’re being punished when it comes to rates and pricing.
“If I buy in America as a foreign national, nonresident, no one in their right mind will buy their first asset abroad,” he said. “They probably have a house. They put money on bonds and stocks, and then they said, ‘Now I have a bucket for residential real estate.’”
Golan said these borrowers are less likely to get behind on loans because of their wealth status. They’re also less likely to worry about market swings, because they’re in for the long haul. He believes this should make them lower-risk customers and should be priced accordingly.
“It's people who don't go delinquent,” he said. “It's people who don't care about crises. If the USD is down, they buy. If the market is down, they buy. But when you look at all the securitization pools and the secondary market ratings, it's garbage, which is ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense.”
Collecting the right data
Because these are wealthy investors who are less likely to default on loans, it seems the pricing doesn’t actually reflect the risk factors. So that’s why his company works to verify the information for these investors so their loans have a chance to be properly priced in the secondary market.
“So they're like, ‘Oh, they speak another language. We can't verify their credit,’” Golan said. “Most lenders don't, because they just push paper. So for us, we collect all the data. We have a data room. We know exactly what their net worth is and where they have accounts.
“So we have all the data, and that's why we're starting to take off. But it's pretty funny that there's no standardization of how to rate these foreigners in a better way.”
RJ Baxter of Choice Mortgage Group and Andrew Kunisawa of Accelerated Lending Group push back against doomsday housing crash predictions, pointing instead to modest price growth and lower rates unlocking activity in 2026. https://t.co/oGNoOrKjZy
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) December 1, 2025
One solution to the problem, according to Golan, is to create a large pool of loans that perform well, with no delinquencies. He said then they’ll be able to go back to the credit bureaus and prove that these loans need better, fairer pricing.
“You need to collect the right data on the quality of borrowers, which we do,” he said. “And the idea is over time to create a big enough pool of originations and no delinquencies, or little delinquencies, whatever they want to check. Then the credit agency says, ‘Hey, here's a pool of something interesting.’ And if this pool is good, this should be rated higher.”
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