I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.  I have enjoyed working with each of you over the past year and look forward to working together in the future.  With this year’s election, the dinner table is going to be quite interesting to say the least.  I wanted to share a quick tip that you can use as a conversation starter and impress your guests.

CNN actually did a whole article on 5 tips to “cope” with dinner talk to help people out this holiday season.  To help everyone out, I wanted to share a quick tip that you can use as a conversation starter to impress your guests and avoid the political fallout.  Can you use an old bartender trick to figure out information about someone quickly?  This will be a nice change of pace from the family debates, albeit a bit awkward if you start quizzing your daughter’s new boyfriend 🙂

In the old days most driver’s license numbers were also the person’s social security number (fortunately most DMVs have figured out with all the identity theft that this is a bad idea). Based on the first three numbers of a person’s SS you can determine allot about a person.

What information can you learn without even pulling a credit report?

How did a bartender use this information to screen patrons?

The first 3 numbers prior to 2011 signifies where a person was born and their SS number was issued. In the old days bouncers could pretty readily spot fake ids (before the google age and everyone had this information) by looking at the license and asking where the person was from, for example if the person said they were from Vermont, but the first three letters were 253, it was clear the person was lying (253 was issued to residents born in Georgia).

What does this have to do with real estate? When I meet a borrower, one of the questions I always ask is where they are from (fortunately all our borrowers were born well before 2011). For many mortgage brokers, this information is especially useful since the first three numbers can tell you quickly if the borrower is legitimate before a credit report is even pulled.

Below is a list from the SS administration of all the prefixes and the associated states. This is just one way to fight identity theft/fraud. Here is a link to another site to look at if you have the full SS and want to see if it is valid: http://socialsecuritynumerology.com/prefixes.php

I hope each of you enjoyed this article and have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.

Written by Glen Weinberg, COO/ VP Fairview Commercial Lending.  Glen has been published as an expert in hard money lending, real estate valuation, financing, and various other real estate topics in the Colorado Real Estate Journal, the CO Biz Magazine, The Denver Post, The Scotsman mortgage broker guide, Mortgage Professional America and various other national publications.

Fairview is a hard money lender specializing in private money loans / non-bank real estate loans in Georgia, Colorado, Illinois, and Florida. They are recognized in the industry as the leader in hard money lending with no upfront fees or any other games. Learn more about Hard Money Lending through our free Hard Money Guide.  To get started on a loan all they need is their simple one page application (no upfront fees or other games).