North Coast Financial Review: Oceanside Broker Licensed Since 2009, No DRE Discipline, Rates From 9.95%

Why this review exists

Search for “north coast financial” and the first results are the company's own city pages (Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Orange County), its Google rating and lender lists. The name is also shared by unrelated companies, and the company's own claims (“45 years,” “$1 billion”) are easy to repeat and hard to check. This page reads the California license record, the company's published terms and its 40 recent-deal pages, and tests each claim against what a public record can show. For the wider market, see our guides to hard money lenders in California and hard money loan rates in 2026.

1. Which North Coast Financial this is

The name is used by several unrelated businesses. In CourtListener we found an Oregon corporation of the same name in a U.S. Tax Court opinion (Docket No. 6670-78), a “North Coast Financial Group” described as part of a life insurer's umbrella in a 2019 federal employment case (E.D.N.Y., 2:19-cv-04848), and a “North Coast Financial Serv.” with a Toledo, Ohio mailing address listed as a creditor in two bankruptcy petitions (N.D. Ill. 2008 and N.D. Ohio 2019). None is the Oceanside company. The one we review is identified by its license: DRE corporation license 01870870, main office 2424 Vista Way Ste 202, Oceanside, California 92054, which is also the address on its website and in the GLEIF record (LEI 254900I445780YG38U05, California registration 3215784).

The DRE page carries a caveat that applies to every record it shows: “license discipline information may have been removed from a licensee's record pursuant to Business & Professions Code Section 10083.2 (c).” “No disciplinary action” means none is shown, not that none ever occurred.

“Since 1981” and “$1 billion”

The company repeats that it has been “a direct lender since 1981” and has funded “over $1 billion.” The records show where the dates come from. The corporation holding the license was issued its license on September 8, 2009, and the BBB profile gives a business start of June 26, 2009. The 1981 date matches the designated officer's individual broker license, issued January 13, 1981, and the “$1 billion” sentence on the about page is worded differently from the home page: “North Coast Financial and its affiliates have funded over $1 billion in real estate loans in California.” So the long record belongs to the people and the affiliated corporations, not to this corporation alone. That is common in brokerage, and it is not a red flag, but a borrower reading “45 years” should know which entity is on the note.

2. Broker, lender, or both

The home page presents it as a direct hard money lender with “multiple sources of capital.” The same site's FAQ says something different: a hard money lender is “a mortgage broker who acts as the intermediary between the borrower and the investor,” responsible for bringing the parties together, completing the loan documents and servicing the loan, and adds “In some cases the hard money lender is investor providing the capital to the borrower through a fund managed by the lender.” The about page describes its president's experience as “loan brokerage and loan servicing for private lenders.”

The trust deed page settles how the investor side works: “The real estate note investor's name will be on the note and deed of trust and there is always a title policy,” and loans are serviced through “our Bureau of Real Estate regulated trust account.” In other words, the usual structure is a broker arranging a loan that an individual investor funds, with the broker servicing it. For a borrower this matters in three ways: ask who the lender of record is on the note, who the loan servicer is, and who decides on extensions and default, because those are the investor's rights, not the broker's. The company also states that loans “made or arranged by a licensed California real estate broker are also exempt from the state's usury limits.” That is the company's reading of California law, and it is the reason the interest rate on a broker-arranged loan is set by negotiation and not by a statutory cap; read your note and take legal advice on it.

3. The terms it publishes

Three observations. First, the 9.95% and 1.5-point figures are floors (“from”), and the asterisk says consumer loans are excluded; a borrower who is buying or refinancing a home to live in is outside the floor. Second, the company's pricing page for the industry as a whole quotes broader ranges (rates “typically range from 8-14%,” points “often range from 2 to 5”), which describes the market, not this lender. Third, the page that matters most to a flipper, “Fix and Flip Interest Rates and Points,” says “Please contact us now for information on current rates and points,” so the investor-flip price is not published. For comparison with posted fix-and-flip sheets, see our hard money loan rates guide.

4. What it actually lends on: 39 published loans

The recent-deals section of the site lists 40 loan pages, each with the amount, the property type and an approximate loan to value. Two pages describe the same $815,000 irrevocable trust loan in Daly City, so we count 39 distinct loans. The pages carry no closing dates we could rely on, no rate and no points. They are the company's own selection, so they show what it chooses to feature, not a random sample of its book.

The numbers are conservative. Amounts run from $90,000 to $1,250,000, with a median of $315,000 and a total of $16,370,000. Of the 37 loans that state a loan to value, the median is 38%, 26 are at 50% or lower, 6 are at 65% or higher and the highest is 70%, which is also the ceiling the city pages advertise. None of the pages describes buying a distressed property, rehabbing it and reselling it. The closest is one $135,000 trust loan used “to repair and upgrade the property prior to renting it out.” Some of these loans are for home purchases or primary residences; the company states that consumer-purpose loans on owner-occupied homes are “subject to extra regulations” and says “Most hard money lenders in California cannot make consumer purpose loans on owner-occupied homes. North Coast Financial is one of the few that can.”

What this means for the reader: if you are a homeowner needing a short bridge, a trust beneficiary buying out a sibling or an investor with plenty of equity, the lender's own examples match your case. If you are a flipper who needs 85% to 90% of cost plus rehab money, the examples above do not show it, and the published floor (up to 70% of value) points to a different product.

5. The investor side

North Coast Financial recruits “a select group of trust deed investors.” Its page says it “approves about one of every twenty loan requests that it receives” and that investors “currently receive yields in the 7.0% – 10.5% range.” These are the company's claims. It does not say how the borrower's rate and points are divided between investor and broker. Because the investor's name goes on the note and deed of trust, these are individual note purchases, not interests in a pooled fund. We searched EDGAR full text for the exact name restricted to Form D on November 13, 2026 and got 0 results, which fits an arrangement with no offering of fund interests, but we did not read the company's offering documents and do not know what disclosures investors receive. A person considering buying trust deeds should read the California Department of Real Estate guidance the company itself links, and ask for the appraisal, title policy, the borrower's exit plan and the servicing agreement for any note.

6. Reviews, BBB and the courts

The home page shows a 5.0 Google rating “Based on 74 reviews,” a company-controlled display. The BBB profile reads: A+ rating, accredited since February 3, 2015, “no complaints filed with BBB in the last 3 years,” and 3 customer reviews. We could only read that page through a page-reading tool because the raw page blocked our request, so treat it as a secondary reading. Three BBB reviews and no complaints are a thin sample.

CourtListener searches for the exact name returned four RECAP records and one opinion, and we found no case in which this company is a party. We did not search California state court dockets, where most lender-borrower suits are filed, so the absence of a federal case says little.

7. What a $300,000 loan costs on its floor terms

The company publishes a floor, so the example below is a floor, not a quote. Our arithmetic, assuming a $300,000 loan, 12 months, interest only, fully drawn:

• Points at 1.5%: $4,500.
• Interest at 9.95% for 12 months: $29,850.
• Points plus interest: $34,350, or 11.45% of the loan.
• Third-party closing costs are extra. Its calculator page says closing costs “typically add 1% to 2% of the purchase price” (escrow, title insurance, notary, recording); on a $300,000 transaction that would be $3,000 to $6,000 (our arithmetic), for a first-year cash cost of roughly $37,350 to $40,350.
• Each extra point costs $3,000 and each extra percentage point of rate costs $3,000 a year on this loan (our arithmetic). The same calculator page says extensions “typically come with a fee, often .5 to 1.5 points,” a general statement about lenders, so ask for this lender's extension fee in writing.

The company states that its points include everything: “No Additional Fees.” Ask the broker to confirm in the written quote that there is no processing, document or underwriting fee and what the broker compensation is, because a broker can be paid in points, in the rate spread or in servicing.

8. What a reader can do with this

• Look up DRE license 01870870 yourself on the DRE public lookup and check that the lender of record on your note is the entity you expect (the corporation, the investor or an affiliate).
• Ask for a written term sheet showing rate, points, term, extension fee, default interest, prepayment terms and who services the loan, before you pay any fee.
• If you are an investor buying a rental or a flip, ask whether the loan can exceed 70% of value and what the rate is, since the site does not post it; get at least two other quotes on the same deal.
• If you are a homeowner or trust beneficiary, ask whether your loan is consumer purpose, since that adds income verification and a 2 to 3 week timeline by the company's own account.
• Check NMLS Consumer Access and the California DFPI register yourself; we did not.

Sources: North Coast Financial website pages (home, California city index, hard money loan requirements, how much do hard money lenders charge, hard money loan and lender FAQ, owner-occupied loans, fix and flip loans, hard money loan calculator, about the broker, trust deed investments, and 40 recent-deal pages), read November 13, 2026; California Department of Real Estate public license records for License IDs 01870870, 00710033 and 00834600, taken November 12, 2026; GLEIF LEI record 254900I445780YG38U05; BBB profile (secondary, read through a page-reading tool); SEC EDGAR full-text search for Form D; CourtListener opinion and RECAP searches. Quoted text is verbatim from the saved pages. Figures labelled “our arithmetic” are calculated by us. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice. Compiled by CrowdfundedWealth on November 13, 2026.