Refinancing a Hard Money Loan

[Mark Weinberg]

I would like to know about refinancing a Hard Money Loan on  a buy and hold property.  My questions are:

1.  If I put a down payment on the hard money loan, do I have to have a down payment for a refinancing?

2.  Can I refinance for 30 years term and no down payment?

3.  What is the process on refinancing a hard money loan to a long term loan?

[David de Luna]

"Down payment" applies to purchases only. On a refi (of any type) there's no money to put into the deal. It's just an application to refinance the current loan. It could be rate and term, meaning you're simply refinancing the existing loan into a new one with a new rate, new term, same loan amount. No cash out. Then there's a cash out refi, where, for example, you have a current value (to be verified by lender) of say, 100k, but you owe HML 50k, so that you have 50k equity. However, the best I've ever seen is 90% on NOO properties (I have one - a HELOC from PenFed), which means in this example, a loan for 40k minus closing costs. So to be clear, in this example, 90 LTV Cash Out Refi means I can get a loan for 90% of the appraised current value of the property and the process is much the same as when you shopped for a purchase loan. But if 50% is already leveraged, there's 40% left for you to wet your beak. ;-)