Approved for Hard Money

[Charles Rodgers]

Hey I just got approved from a Hard Money lender in Georgia. I have called over 15 realtors. They are no help. Im guessing they are doing the same thing The minimum I can buy the house is 75k. Does anyone have any suggested programs or answers 

[Randall Alan]

@Charles Rodgers

Hi Charles,

Your question is a little vague. Are you saying that you have to at least spend $75,000 on the house for the lender to be interested? I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for... someone to find you a property to buy? You can search the MLS yourself. My suggestion is to check out Redfin.com. You can put their search results in "table / list" view and sort by dollars per square feet to find the cheapest property by size. Sort of a cool feature. It lets you see the property that has the greatest potential value by size. (Of course the price doesn't' always relate to condition of the property... so that is some of the secondary investigations you have to do).

You say you are approved for a hard money loan. Right off the bat I am a little suspicious. Hard money lenders usually want to know what deal you are doing. But you don't have a deal. So my first words of advice might be to be suspicious... or at least cautious... of your hard money lender. I was under contract to a buyer with a hard money lender. The borrower paid thousands of dollars to 'start the process' with the hard money lender... but in the end, the hard money lender kept raising the bar as to what was required from the borrower up to the point that the requirements couldn't be met. Turns out the HML was actually just sort of a broker that would TRY to get them a hard money loan... once they had already paid the broker a huge ($4,000) fee. In the end we had to find a new buyer and the borrower was out their $4,000... so be careful out there!

Maybe you are pre-approved for a loan and all is good... but I'm guessing you are a beginner being this was post # 2 for you... so I'm more concerned for you getting suckered into something where you might not no better since you may have less experience than a more seasoned investor. Do you understand that you have to have money of your own in the deal... and that usually the HML usually reimburses you as you make progress on your flip (presuming you are doing a flip) as usually you don't do buy and holds with hard money.

I wish all the best for you... just want to see you be successful and not get exploited by some of the creeps out there!

Randy