Short-term, asset-backed lending with yields that often fall in the 8%–12% range. Not for everyone — and we'd rather you find that out now than after a sales call.
8 questions. 2–3 minutes. We read every answer ourselves before we reply.
If you're a Canadian (or Canada-focused) investor with $50K+ in deployable capital and a 6–24 month time horizon, this page is for you.
Most "private lending" funnels online are designed to capture your name and email, then drop you into a calendar booking with someone whose job is to convert you. We're doing the opposite.
The check below asks eight short questions about your capital position, timeline, risk profile, and decision structure. Then we tell you — honestly — whether private mortgage lending the way we do it is a real fit for you right now, or whether something else would serve you better. If it isn't a fit, we say so.
That's the whole pitch.
Private mortgage lending means you become the lender of record on a real-property loan. A property owner needs financing the banks won't or can't provide quickly enough — usually a bridge between two transactions, a renovation timeline, or a credit-quality gap that a bank computer flagged but a human underwriter wouldn't. You loan them money. Your lawyer registers a mortgage charge against their home or commercial property in your favour. They pay you monthly interest. At the end of the term, they pay back the principal.
It's not a fund. It's not a participation in someone else's loan. One lender funds one deal. You are the lender, on title, with a registered mortgage charge against a specific property as your security.
The two levers that make this work for you instead of against you:
A well-structured private mortgage position typically looks like this:
In a sound structure, your return isn't quietly skimmed by layers of middlemen: no MLM-style downstream commissions, no referral bonuses. The yield is the yield. And the borrower covers your legal costs for your lawyer to draft and register the mortgage documents.
Lions Den principals have structured over $400 million in private mortgage transactions since 2008. That's the number we stand on. It's the truth, verifiable, and it represents a meaningful run through both quiet years and credit cycles.
Here's what we won't claim: that nobody has ever lost a dollar on a private mortgage we've structured. They have. Defaults happen. Recovery timelines stretch. Properties sell for less than appraisal in down markets. The structural protections — conservative LTV, a registered mortgage charge on title, and a position matched and priced to each deal's risk — are what make those situations manageable rather than catastrophic. They don't eliminate risk. They make sure the risk is the kind a sophisticated lender can price, plan for, and survive.
Sophisticated investors respect that framing. We've seen that the lenders who do well in this asset class are the ones who came in understanding the asset class is real, the protections are real, AND the risk is real. The ones who come in expecting perfection don't last past their first deal cycle.
Many private lenders who started with us in this asset class back in 2008 to 2010 are still in it today — because the structure fits their goals. The ones who stay came in with their eyes open and have watched it perform across more than fifteen years of changing credit environments.
"The most boring 11% you'll ever earn."
That's how one of our long-time lenders described it back to us, and it's the best summary we've heard. The structure is intentionally boring: conservative LTV, a registered charge on title, monthly distributions, principal back at term. That's it.
If you're looking for the next 50-bagger crypto pre-sale, a high-conviction concentrated equity bet, or any kind of speculative leverage strategy, this is not the asset class for you. We'd rather you do nothing with us than do something that doesn't fit your portfolio's actual job.
If, on the other hand, you have capital that's sitting in a low-yield position you've been meaning to deal with, and you want a real-asset-backed income position — the kind designed for investors who'd rather not become full-time market watchers — this may be the right asset class for you to explore. The suitability check at the bottom of this page tells you which one you are.
We get this question constantly, so we put the answer here instead of leaving it to a follow-up email.
Three reasons:
If $50K isn't where you are today, the suitability check still works. It just routes you into a different conversation — one about what to focus on first.
You're likely a fit if:
You're likely not a fit if:
The check is eight questions. It asks about your capital range, the source of that capital, your timeline, your risk priority, your prior experience with private lending, your decision-making structure, the return you'd consider worth your time, and whether you're open to a call.
Total time: 2–3 minutes. One question per page so you can think about each one rather than rapid-fire selecting.
When you submit, two things happen automatically:
If we do book that call, it isn't a pitch — it's where we figure out the right way in for you. Some people want to learn to place and manage their own private mortgages. Others would rather plug into an experienced team and have the sourcing and paperwork handled for them. Different people choose different paths; the suitability check just tells us whether private lending belongs in the conversation at all.
No autoresponder pretending to be a personal note. The answers actually get read.
The check is 8 short questions and takes 2–3 minutes. There's no calendar pressure on the other side — just an honest read of whether private mortgage lending is a fit for you right now.
We read every answer ourselves. Most replies go out within one business day, often sooner.