New Deal Alert! We Were the Borrowers on This One…
Most private lenders will tell you they understand real estate. Fewer can show you a house they bought, renovated, and put back on the market themselves.
This one is at 409 Blackbird Station Road in Townsend, Delaware. Alex and I were the borrowers. We found it, funded it, ran the renovation, and it is listed now. Our photographer put together a short walkthrough, under a minute, and you can watch the house tour here.
The listing is live on Zillow if you want to see the finished product room by room.
Why we still do our own deals
SPG Capital exists so our community can earn predictable cash flow they cannot find on Wall Street. That is the business. But the reason the business works is that we never stopped being investors ourselves.
We are not just private lenders. We are local real estate investors with deep roots in Chester County and Delaware, and we have been buying, renovating, and holding property here for years. That is where our deal flow comes from. It is also where our underwriting comes from.
When Alex reviews a borrower’s numbers, he is not reading a spreadsheet in the abstract. He has priced the same materials, waited on the same inspections, and absorbed the same surprises. He knows which rehab budgets are optimistic and which timelines are fiction, because he has written both kinds himself and learned the difference the expensive way.
What this project actually involved
The house is a 1970 ranch on just under an acre. Three bedrooms, two full baths, a one-car garage, and the kind of bones that reward a full interior update rather than a cosmetic pass.
We took the interior down and rebuilt it: refreshed living spaces, modern finishes throughout, and an open layout that works for how people actually use a house this size. We also replaced the septic system entirely. That is the kind of line item that scares off a lot of buyers and more than a few investors, because it is expensive, it is invisible in photographs, and it does nothing for your Instagram. It is also exactly the sort of thing that determines whether a deal closes cleanly six months later.
This is what a short-term project looks like when it is done properly. Buy well, fix the things that matter including the ones nobody will photograph, and bring a finished product to a real market at a real price.
What this means if you are on the other side of the loan
Every dollar in our fund is secured by property. Not a promise, not a pooled interest in something abstract, but a specific house at a specific address with a specific value.
We have walked these properties. In this case we owned one. That is the standard we hold every borrower to, and it is why we can tell you with some confidence what the collateral behind a loan is actually worth.
For investors in the fund, the structure is straightforward:
Collateralized, short-term loans. Each loan is secured by real property, and the terms are short by design. We are financing projects that finish, not open-ended positions.
Monthly distributions and statements. You receive income monthly, and a statement that shows you plainly where it came from.
Local market advantage. Our borrower pipeline comes from a network we built ourselves, one project at a time, across Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. We are not buying paper off a broker’s list.
The part most lenders skip
Anybody can write a check against an appraisal. The harder skill is knowing which borrowers will finish and which will stall at eighty percent, and that judgment does not come from a credit model. It comes from having stood in a half-finished kitchen at the end of a month, doing the math on what it will take to get to the closing table.
We have been in that kitchen. It is why we are comfortable lending to people who are in it now, and why our investors can be comfortable too.
Start a conversation
If you are an accredited investor looking at real estate debt, or a borrower with a project in Pennsylvania, Delaware, or New Jersey, the best next step is a conversation.
Book thirty minutes with Josh. No pitch deck, no pressure. Just an honest look at whether what we do fits what you are trying to build.
Josh Wollaston is Co-Founder of SPG Capital, a private real estate debt fund serving investors and borrowers across Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.