trying to figure out financing

[Chris Murphy]

Hi, this is my first post on BP. Past two weeks or so I've I jumped into this place head first.

I'm located on the south shore of Ma. I'm actually in the trades so I have no formal knowledge of finance. I purchased and sold a 2 family in the Boston market, which put a great down payment on my current single family residence.

I have a list of questions and am just going to fire them out and hope some of you out here can answer some if not all.

here goes:

Where is the best place to find pre-foreclosure/foreclosures? Are membership sites worth it?

If not foreclosures what have you found to be the best ways to find great deals?(finding rundown properties and contacting owners through public records?)

Hard money lenders: when using these do you use only HML or conventional? or can you combine a mixture of both (conventional loan with hard money rehab cost)

From what I've read most HML want 20-25% of your cash in the game like a conventional investment loan, Is this correct in my understanding?

Will a high primary residence LTV of about 85% hurt my investing?

I've always watched real estate around me and planned one day to eventually invest I'm hoping to start going after something by this time next year at best. My plan goes something like this:

Get a preapproval of a traditional investment mortgage with 20% down

purchase condo or similar priced home (going condo route seems to be the most affordable in my area for a first investment unless I can find a good deal)

If repairs are needed get a construction loan or find a hardmoney lender to finance property and rehab cost as long as loan is 70% ARV (seems to be a standard and will allow for profit making)

fix up the property decide if it is profitable to rent and refi or sell and reinvest the proceeds

^^this is my ROUGH plan. The wealth of information here often finds me two hours later reading up on several different subjects and never reading on the one I wanted too. It would be nice to know if I have my head wrapped around at least a portion of how the game works.

Being in the trades its not the actual rehab work that worries me its the finance stuff where I get analysis paralysis.

Any help or input to my lengthy post is much appreciated.

look forward to learning more here.