Non-Bank Lending in an Era of Bank Deregulation
The decade since the financial crisis has been challenging for our nation overall, but it has been a fertile period for non-bank real estate lenders. The great majority of Americans were angered by what they saw as reckless and sometimes cynical behavior by both commercial and investment banks who profited immensely from lax lending practices, and then needed taxpayer bailouts to avoid bankruptcy. As a result, Congress passed new rules, mostly generated from the Dodd-Frank Act, that greatly restricted bank lending to real estate investors and developers of any kind.