Hard Money in Real Estate Funding

Hard Money in Real Estate Funding

Real estate funding is crucial to your real estate investing success, and contrary to popular belief it’s really not that hard to find the money.

I believe the number one most frequently asked question for a newbie investor is “were do I find the money to fund my real estate deals.” This is perhaps the biggest concern if not the main concern newbie investors face when starting to invest in property.

Believe it or not it’s actually easier than you think to fund most if not all your investment properties, even in today’s tough economy, with no credit, bad credit, little money, or no money.

You literally have access to over $1,000,000, if you know where to find it of course. The problem is most new comers don’t take the time to educate themselves in the importance of finding, funding, fixing, and flipping deals correctly.

Let me explain how the system works…

Most of you go out and try to find the money first and what happens next is you have absolutely no leverage. While you might have a sound proof plan you still have nothing to leverage it with.

Most private investors, at least the one’s I’m going to be teaching you about need to see a property first.

Why? It’s simple, having the property in contract is going to give you the leverage you need, but it can’t just be any property out there. You have to buy right. Meaning you must purchase the property at a wholesale price. This will determine if you’ll get real estate funding for your deal or not.

I can imagine what most of you may already be thinking. “How can I buy a property if I don’t have any money or credit, it’s just not possible.” How wrong you are.

Find the deal first and the money will come. I can almost Guarantee it.

Understanding how to find the deal first will give you leverage to fund all your deals.

Let me give you an example of what a good deal should looks like.

It’s a secret most newbie investors struggle with when learning how to buy a property because they simply just don’t know how much to pay for a property. I like to call it the 65% Rule. What is the 65% rule? The 65% rule means you don’t offer to purchase an investment property for more than 65% of the fair market value.

So let’s just say you found a distressed property that you know once it’s been rehabbed is worth $100,000 fair market value.

By using the 65% rule you would multiply it by $100,000 or $100,000 x.65 which would equal to $65,000.

In the example above I would offer no more than $65,000 for the distressed property. This leaves you a safety net and a potential profit margin of 35% or $35,000 not including closing costs.

Can you see your leverage power now!

Do you understand how powerful the 65% rule is. Now you see why I’m telling you to first find the deal in order to acquire real estate funding. By following the 65% rule you can acquire real estate funding with little or no money and no credit or even bad credit. I bet you’re wondering who these lenders are right about now?

These lenders are what we investors call hard money lenders.

Unlike the traditional banks that want to check your credit and your income, hard money lenders lend you money based on the property and not you personally.


Private Hard Money Lenders – Choose the One, Which Suits You Best!

I want to talk about the core difference between private and institutional lenders. An institution is basically a bank or a credit union, which provides funding for different stuff.

On the other hand, private is more about a bunch of people, who works under a private organization, which works towards helping people buying and selling good deals by providing financing. They are not held by government or any other regional organization but they work by themselves and use their own money.

Now, we come down to two basic types of lenders in the world of real estate:

1. Institutional lenders

These are the hard money lenders, who are a part of a bank or any other federal organization and they work with them. Although, it is quite difficult to get a loan from them because they look at lots of things including the borrower’s credit history, job, bank statements etc.

These are only stuffs that institutional hard money lenders are concerned about. They don’t have a real estate background, that’s why; they don’t care much about the worth of a property. Even, if you have a good deal, they won’t lend you unless your credit or job history is satisfactory.

There’s a huge gap between institutional lenders and real estate investors, which isn’t easy to fill.

2. Private hard money lenders

Private money lenders are usually real estate investors and therefore, they understand the needs and demands of a borrower. They aren’t regulated by any federal body and that’s why, they have their own lending criteria, which are based upon their own real estate understandings.

Their main concern is property and not the borrower’s credit history or bank statement. The motto of private hard money lenders is simple: If you have a good deal in hand, they will fund you, no matter what. But if you take a crap deal to them, then they won’t fund you, even if you have excellent credit history because they believe that if you’ll make money, then only they would be able to make profit.

If you have found a hard money lender but he or she hasn’t got any experience in real estate investment, then they won’t be able to understand your deal. They will always think like a banker.

A true private money lender is one, who can help you in evaluating the deal and giving you a proper direction and funding if you find a good deal. But if the deal is bad, they will tell you straight away. Before rehabbing a property, they know what would be its resale value, due to their extensive experience.

The basic difference between institutional hard money lenders and private hard money lenders is that the institutional lenders try to have everything in place and perfect order. They want to have all the figures and the amount of profit they would be making. They completely ignore the main asset, i.e. the property.

Whereas, private money lenders use their own fund and experience to realize what’s store for them. They don’t try to sell the paper or recapitalize. They just look at the property and see if it is worthy enough to rehab or not.

In the end, they just want to make good profits along with the borrower. If anyone goes to them with a good deal, they will fund them. Some of them only fund for the property, whereas, others gives funding for the repairs too as long as they can see a good ROI.


What Are Hard Money Loans?

To get a hard money loan, you just need to have a good collateral or property, which is completely opposite to a traditional loan, where the lender is only interested in your particulars. That’s why; you are eligible of getting these loans even if you have a bad credit history or no job history.

This is the reason behind the success of hard money and fix and flip investing.

There are investors who get confused while looking for hard money loans because of the usage of terms like “hard money lender” and “private money lender” in the real estate investment business.

What I have learnt from my experiences is that a hard money lender is basically a professional lender, who is doing it for a living. They usually have higher interest rates and they also charge points, which is 1% of the total loan you are getting and you will have to pay that right after your loan is funded.

For example, a hard money lender can also charge you up to 20% interest and 4 points. Most of the lenders I have used, are the people referred to me by my friends or I have found them via internet.

On the other hand, most of the private money lenders are my friends or colleagues i.e. people who are within my social circle. They charge you less interest rates like 8 to 10% with no points.

If you are looking for good amount of money, hard money lenders could be the best choice. That’s why; they are the best options in case of mortgage as these lenders feel more secure that they will recover their money soon.

While doing my first deal in real estate, I used the services of a lender who charged me 15% interest rate and 3 points for 80% of the purchase price of the property including repairs. The rest of the funding was done by private money as I use them on second or third place.

So, basically I am using private money for 25% of my fix and flip needs.

This is basically what I know about private money versus hard money. There are some major differences but the main purpose is to have good connections and building up good relationships amongst each other to get complete funding for your deal.

I don’t use my own money for funding a deal, even though I can afford it because when there are two parties involved, the profit margin also increased and in that way, both of them can make money. It helps you in spreading wealth.


You Can Invest in Rental Property

All that money lost in the stock market. Wow, no one thought it would or could happen so quickly. It did though, and millions of people lost millions of dollars, and they and you want it back.

Well, that just may be possible. An investment tool that originally came from the stock market is available to use in another area today, Real Estate. Property values have fallen in real estate from 8% to 30% depending on what part of the country you live in. This makes a real estate investment for the average investor more realistic than it has been in years.

I’m not talking about those so called real estate investment opportunities that you are asked to buy after midnight on TV. This is not for those looking for Zero Down Payment real estate deals, although there may be opportunities with foreclosures with values that have dropped by as much as 50% This requires that you actually have money to invest. It can be as little as 3-1/2% up to 30%. With the magic of leverage, your returns are multiplied and can help earn those stock market losses back sooner than you may realize.

Let’s say you want to start very modestly, and have $25,000 or $30,000 to invest. With your credit still intact you can purchase real estate previously valued at $150,000 or more as an investment. It could be a small commercial or rental property with an income stream. There are still lenders, even today, making conventional commercial loans.

Let’s use a $100,000 property as an example. You should be able to purchase the property with 20% down plus closing costs of about 5%. Now you control a $100,000 investment for about $25,000. If that $25,000 was in the bank and earning 5% interest, and banks are paying less than that as of this writing, you would earn $1,250 in a year. If that $100,000 real estate property appreciates only 3%, that’s 3% of the $100,000 value you control, you earn $3,000 on your $25,000 investment and that’s 12% return on your investment. That’s the magic of Leverage.

It gets even better, so let’s take a closer look. Now that you have bought the property you have to pay for it, usually by the month, and there are expenses. By choosing your property wisely in the beginning, the monthly income from rentals should pay the payments, taxes, insurance, and maintenance of the property and provide cash flow (additional profit). If it doesn’t, you are paying too much for the property and with the downturn of real estate values it should be easer to negotiate a price that will allow you to meet your goals.

If your personal situation permits it, with Government programs like VA and FHA, you should be able to increase your returns far beyond 12%. FHA financing is available for a four unit apartment building if the buyer is planning to live in one of the units. This allows you to leverage up to $280,000 in real estate for less than $10,000 down and allows you to get the seller to pay the closing costs for you up to 6%. It also allows the property to be financed up to 30 years, which gives you lower payments and more cash flow. Now let’s look at that return on investment. 3% of the $280,000 you control is $8,400 a year and an 84% return on your $10,000 investment.

Of course it’s a little more complicated than this, but not much. Leverage is a wonderful tool to use in investing today. Look into it, it could go a long way toward making up for your losses.


Hard Money Lenders – The Secret of Successful Funding!

Actually, only a small number of lenders truly understands the whole concept of fix and flip investing and these private hard money lenders are categorized into the following five basic types:

1. Residential lenders

2. Commercial lenders

3. Bridge lenders

4. High end lenders

5. Development lenders

Amongst these five different types of lenders, you need to find out which lender is going to be suitable for your real estate investment. Generally people start by investing into a single family home, that’s why they choose residential hard money lenders.

But the basic difference between the lenders depends upon the source of funds. That’s why; they can be easily categorized into bank lenders and private hard money lenders.

Bank Type Lenders – If you are working with a lender who is providing you funding with the help of some financial institutions, where they will sell or leverage your paper to the Wall Street in order to get you money. These types of lenders will be following some rules and regulations specified by the banks or Wall Street.

That’s why, in order to get the loan, you need to follow these rules and regulations, which isn’t suitable for a real estate investor interested in doing fix and flip investing.

Private hard money lenders – These are the lenders who work on private basis. They usually work in a group of private lenders, who likes to lend money regularly. Their best quality is that they do not sell their paper to any financial institution or bank. They have particular rules and regulations, which are made to help a real estate investor.

Private Lenders That Are into Fix and Flip – You can easily find residential hard money lenders, who are really into fix and flip loans. Most of the real estate investors find it quite difficult to get financing for buying a property, which they have taken under contract.

And when they finally a good property and contact a lender for funding, their loans can get rejected on the basis of some neighborhood problems. Then the investor look for another property but the lender couldn’t fund them because of market depreciation.

In this way, an investor is always looking for properties. But some lenders don’t have enough money to fund their deal, whereas others are continuously increasing their interest rates, which can’t be afforded. Apart from all these issues, you can find lenders who are willing to lend money on fix and flip properties.

These lenders also have certain rules and regulations like a typical bank or financial institution but they are designed to work in favor for the real estate investor.


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