CEO says one thing that can derail a deal quickly is less-than-honest deal details
While there have been challenges in the commercial real estate market in 2025, brokers and lenders have been able to find room to make deals even with difficult market conditions. One CEO believes that upfront honesty from both brokers and customers makes closing deals much easier.
Brian Good, CEO of iBorrow, has seen a lot of deals over his three decades in the mortgage industry. During his time at iBorrow, he has seen times where the details provided by brokers and customers weren’t exactly the most upfront.
“I had a good friend who was a mortgage broker forever, and he was very good at telling his clients to tell us the truth,” Good told Mortgage Professional America. “He would say, ‘Don't try to hide the problems. Be upfront with the lender. They're going to figure it out, and it's better that they figure it out directly from us, upfront, versus through their due diligence. So tell them the truth.’”
He said it's often younger, more inexperienced brokers who will try to bend the truth to get a deal through to approval.
“That’s a trick that hasn't been translated to the younger brokerage group out there yet,” Good said. “Things like, is it office or not? Well, it's industrial, but it's flexi-industrial. How much office space is really in this building? Why do I have to dig to the sixth page to find that out? Tell me more about the area. Don't just say it's New York when it's really New Jersey. Those are the annoying factors of this business.”
Broker usage increasing
Good said that as his company has grown, so has the use of mortgage brokers in transactions. Because they’re using brokers, these customers are coming in more educated about the entire process.
“When we were doing smaller loans than what we're doing now, like $5 million or $10 million, a lot of the borrowers weren't represented, so they came to us directly, and they wouldn't have mortgage brokers. Now they do have brokers, and they have more intelligent data, and they're able to get more information.”
Because information is more readily available, it is also much easier for lenders to check the claims in a potential deal to see if it is really as good as it seems.
“Now you can get all this data at your fingertips,” Good said. “Anybody who tries to hide something or tries to say it's a great market. Well, 30 seconds later, I can find out if it's a good market. And I think it translates to the sophistication level. I think over time, it'll help the efficiencies of these businesses and real estate. I think that's a good thing.
“So it's not like you either have CoStar or you don't. You can find more up-to-date information. I think that's a big part of this business, and I think that's attributable to the younger population that's really sort of running the deals at this point.”
Upfront, realistic terms
Good has a couple of simple philosophies when it comes to getting deals done. Just as he wants honest deals from brokers and customers, he wants to be up front and honest with the broker at the very beginning of the deal process.
“If you like a deal, you tell them you like it,” he said. “If you don't like it, you tell them you don't like it, so you don't string people along. I think people appreciate that, especially the brokers we work with. They know we'll give them a straight answer pretty quickly. Second, you go ahead and close the transaction as you promised to close it.
“It's a very simple mantra, which is, do what you say you're going to do, and it's nothing more expansive than that. It really isn't. And I think, for the most part, we’ve stayed true to that through the 15 years.”
According to Jeff Brown, founder and CEO of T2 Capital Management, commercial real estate brokers and investors need to carefully assess each school before investing in student housing. https://t.co/g7EzkJ3kLK
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) August 13, 2025
The other factor that Good says has helped his business is not necessarily being the lowest rate quote on the market. He said it’s another factor brokers need to be looking out for, because if a quoted rate deal sounds too good to be true, it likely is.
“We rarely are the lowest rate quote for any borrower, and brokers know that,” Good said. “But they get the flip side of it, which is they're going to close and they're reliable. We've made a living out of finishing second on these quotes. I can tell you the list of people who have finished first against us, only to come back and not do what they said they were going to do. Then it comes back to us, and we end up with the deal.”
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