Smith dares to go where other lenders fear to tread.

Richard Smith, a vice president and the leading loan originator at real estate lender, Fremont Capital, knows his shop isn't going to always win the battle of low interest rates. And observing the market these days, why would it want to?

Given the sheer amount of capital providers these days and the ferocity with which they bid to supply loans for the acquisition or development of any halfway viable property, it's a wonder how any of them manage to turn a profit from the minuscule spreads that result from their intense competition.

Fremont has focused instead on providing higher yielding bridge and construction loans, more complex deals that oftentimes carry a higher risk profile, but also allow the firm to separate itself from the pack and close loans where others can't using its creativity and extensive real estate know how.

For the past three years, Richard Smith has been one of the lightning rods in the firm's success.

Having closed more than $600 million in loans during 2005 and more than $1 billion since joining Fremont in 2003, Smith was just named the company's top producer for the second year in a row.

Working out of the San Francisco based company's New York City office, which just completed a record $1 billion in financing last year, Smith has been a model of how to arrange deals with that hard-to-find balance the firm seeks between risk and reward.

One such deal that Smith executed at the end of 2005, was a $105 million construction loan to real estate owner and developer, Metrovest Equities, to acquire the former Jersey City Medical Center and convert it into a residential condominium to be called The Beacon. Located in an area other lenders considered too far from transportation and too gritty to command pricing per condo unit sufficient enough to rein in the deal's risk, Smith stepped in because he believed deeply in its viability. It was an instance in which Smith seemed to transcend the sometimes black and white, number crunching confines of loan origination to become in spirit something of an equity partner.

"We have a lot of confidence in this developer, and I really believe this project is going to be a great development," Smith said. "Eventually it's going to have as many as 1000-units and its own retail with stuff like supermarkets and amenities, it's going to be a self sufficient neighborhood unto its own."

The $105 million loan for The Beacon finances only its opening phase of construction. All told, it will be a 12-building compound to be built in staggered succession--meaning that it will continue to feed Smith's and Fremont's pipeline of deals for years to come.

But always eager to grow his business even more, Smith said that he is aiming to diversify the types of loans he is involved with.

Currently about 90% of the loans he handles are for construction projects, but Smith sees ample room to underwrite other bridge loans, such as those required by real estate investors when they purchase a property in need of repositioning.

"They buy a building that has tenants whose leases are going to roll over and they want to do some leasing and improve the cash flow," Smith said.

"It's a loan to get them from point A to point B, when they have better cash flow they can refinance. Right now we're doing a $50 million loan like that for a building on Wall Street. These are the kinds of loans that I think we're going to be doing more of.