Any borrower would prefer to borrow at low, fixed interest rates from the most aggressive bank or institutional lender. At Winter & Company Commercial Real Estate Finance, more than 95% of our day-to-day business is devoted to arranging just those kinds of commercial mortgages. To the amazement of most (including ourselves), these days, most of the deals Winter & Company closes has an interest rate with a 5 in front of it!

Yet when opportunities come the way of real estate investors, they do not always come wrapped up with ribbons, lots of current cash flow, illustrious operating histories and the promise of immediately being able to achieve a standard 1.25 debt service coverage as well as hitting all the usual underwriting benchmarks. Of course, no one wants to pay 12% in a 6% interest rate environment, but if a property is, at present, not producing any cash flow, or if the owner's/buyer's plan is to transition it from point "A" to point "B", a higher-interest, asset-based loan may be the only way to promptly and reliably get it financed.

In order to facilitate lending to commercial real estate professionals with projects that are currently in an embryonic phase, or in situations where they are transitioning a property from one state to another (for example from manufacturing to residential), we have created W Financial., a direct private mortgage lender. W Financial is able to address the other 5% or so of loan requests that come across Winter & Company desks.

(continued)

page 1 of 2