Relationship building through small short term loans?

[Jamie Harris]

Hi BPers,

Greetings from Cincinnati! My partner and I are contemplating the idea of offering small, short term loan opportunities to investors in our network e.g. family, friends, colleagues to help build trust and a track record. Hopefully this would lead to larger opportunities, etc. in the future.

The idea is we offer a lending opportunity on a deal we're working on to an investor, secured by a subject property, even though we could close it on our own, without the loan.

Does it make more sense to save the interest we'd pay and paperwork, and just profit more in the short term? Once we have a larger portfolio of deals done, we could then present to our network deals in which we actually need their lending.

We have a new opportunity we're working on, but we're unsure whether we should go this route. I apologize for the long-windedness and the possible over-analysis of our issue!

Thanks!