New investors beware of this company

[Jonathan Schoap]

Today I have ended a 3-day roller-coaster relationship with the HML DoHardMoney. They advertise 100% cash to close with only $3000.00 down.You need no experience, they perform no credit check, and the only interview I had with them were to answer some questions like "Do you want financial freedom?" and "Are you ready to start your career in Real Estate?" Great!! These guys are perfect for me because I have no experience, my credit is not awesome and all of my answers to their motivational questions were "Absolutely."We really hit it off.Again, no credit check and no experience, and I was approved for $250,000 per deal (which would cover purchase price, closing costs, rehab, the whole deal) and a total of $750,000 in order to have 3 deals going at one time.They were very excited to let me know that, and I soaked it up. I must have really sold these guys on my work ethic and commitment to REI, right?There is no way that they offer this kind of lending to everyone that asks for it, right? The only kicker to this beautiful relationship between investor and lender is they require $3000 down. Not $3000 down on a property, just 3K to be a part of the family. To be fair, they made me aware that $2350 would be refunded after completion of the first deal.The other $650 is the cost of 2 appraisals that need to be within 10% of your ARV on a property in order for them to fund the property.I would also have 24/7 access to advisors and a plethora of listings "right in your own backyard" to choose from. Ok. I also needed to pay the $3000 by the end of the day, those were their words. I said I wasn't comfortable putting that money down, for one thing not having talked to my wife first, and two just thinking on it for a night at the very least.They said in this business you need to be able to make big decisions at a moment's notice but they could probably give me a 24-hour extension. Generous

But the money upfront, that seemed odd and my scam alarms starting going off. But I will be honest, I wasn't completely put off as I am sure other new hungry investors have not been. All they wanted was $3000 down and I could go out and find a house and I could really get this joy and satisfaction of REI kicked into high gear. I had a conversation with my wife about them last night. She is currently getting her realtors license in NC because we want to be involved in RE together. She was very skeptical. We looked them up on the Better Business Bureau. Yikes, folks. 50 + complaints all saying the same thing, "They haven't financed a deal yet (due to impossible requirements) and won't give back the $3000 due to a lousy 3-day refund policy." I am paraphrasing the quotes here but that is the short of it. I saw our wonderful relationship go down the tubes.

I decided to have one more conversation with Steve, my “financial director” and wanted some other questions answered.The more questions I asked the more agitated he got and he made a couple comments that, at least in my mind, make the difference between lenders and scammers. Steve’s first comment was “You’re not going to be able to find this money anywhere else.”Is that true? Is that statement definite? If I want $750,000 to start to rehab my once beautiful hurricane Florence ravaged city of New Bern, NC, does the buck stop with DoHardMoney? I think the answer is no.Will it take time, most definitely. At that point his interests were squarely aligned with the interests of his scam company, not the investor. His pursuit of my $3000 overtook the lack of common sense in giving a brand new investor or newbie $750,000 and saying to him go forth with my money and do great and wonderful things that I just know you are capable of. I am sure there are investors on here who lenders will compete for. The investor brings in a deal and a lender will offer A and another lender will offer B. But those investors are white hot and know what they are doing. It’s my opinion now that if a lender/scammer is competing for a newbie’s business by saying “You’re not going to be able to find this money anywhere else,” They are fairly confident that they indeed won’t lose a dime to you but in-fact take your 3K and run.

The last comment Steve made ended our relationship. “What are you afraid of?” This comment was made after 5 minutes of him being fairly sure he wasn’t getting my business and he was very agitated. I viewed it as a last ditch effort to strike an ego cord and call me out for not really wanting to get involved in RE. Why get personal? Has anyone had an experience with a lender, who wasn’t trying to scam them, where they weren’t getting this investors business and they got personal?

I stayed on the phone with them for 5 minutes to long today and all in all came very close to signing up with these guys.There are testimonials of their success stories and undoubtedly there are people on here who can succeed with them. I don’t think that makes me a worse investor then the ones who go with these guys, maybe it just means I am looking for a different fit with lending.

New investors, approach these guys with caution. They say all the right things and make it look like all your dreams of REI will come true.

[Jacque Fairbourn]

Disclosure - Director of PR for DoHardMoney

@Jonathan Schoap

I'm sorry you had a negative experience speaking with a representative of our company. We'd never want someone to feel pressured into enrolling in one of our OPTIONAL programs. I've sent you a message here as well.

Do Hard Money has a wide variety of funding options available for real estate investors. No one ever need to enroll in any program or purchase any of our products in order to obtain a loan from us. 

However, in order to get access to all of our funding options enrollment may be necessary for borrowers in certain situations. If we are going to extend funding with no or low cash to close, no monthly payments etc.  we are taking on more risk, and so we need to follow much more stringent guidelines for those loans. When we fund deals that are riskier because the borrower has bad credit or has never flipped a house we are taking on more risk. so we will want that borrower using our system. Utilizing the system about which you were speaking with our representative makes it easier to understand how to find the right kind of property. This means that not only does it need to be a profitable deal, but one meeting guidelines that give us confidence that a rehab can be completed not just quickly but properly and that the property can be listed and sold within the time frame of the loan. If you have a great deal for which you would just like to obtain funding you can submit a loan application on our site and we can review the merits of that deal with you and see which funding option will work best. 

People will post on here that we've turned down loans for them when we've actually extended a loan offer but they just didn't like it. They've posted on here (and on the BBB)saying we rejected their deal when they never even actually submitted a loan application, they've just played around with the tools and the few properties they've plugged in won't qualify. People post when a deal they've submitted initially looked profitable but they don't know how to put together a realistic and reasonable scope of work for the rehab and we tell them we need that in place before we will even send evaluators out to look at the property. (These scenarios are the many of the ones ones that the BBB investigates and marks as resolved even when the person who initiated the complaint isn't happy with it. The record of the complaint stays whether or not the BBB has validated it, even if the business can prove the complaint is misleading)

I'm not saying that we don't make mistakes, because we do. We surely do. We correct those. We make amends when we are in the wrong. 

Again, we are so sorry you had this unfortunate call with a representative. We will be reaching out to you personally as well. Very shortly. My direct # is here in my signature as well.