Buy and Hold with Hard Money

[Jeffrey A Hayes]

I’m a new buy and hold investor and I’m vetting all my financing option and while private and convention lending make the most sense, I’d like to understand everyone’s opinion on hard money use case with buy and hold, namely the exit strategy.

[Tim Roberts]

@Jeffrey A Hayes you have drawn a lot of lenders to your hard money question...

Start backwards.  Get with your lender (conventional fannie/freddie lender) or have your mentor refer you to someone he/she might be using.  Interview a few lenders to get a feel for their experience in helping real estate investors purchase properties.  You have several lenders here on your post to get to know and ask questions of.  

An experienced lender is a good member to have on your team for many reasons.  Often, if a conventional lender cannot help you they will connect you to people they know to give you other options to consider.  They can also be an accountability partner for you if they understand your investing strategy.

Go through the pre-qualification with them to better understand your buying power, credit, and capacity.  This is key because it gives you a starting point of where and how to begin making decisions when buying a specific property.

Think of hard money as a tool.  Sometimes hard money makes sense when competing in an offer.  Speed often gets the better price or a chance at the new purchase.  A conventional loan is a tool as well, depending on the property and the strategy you are looking when building your real estate portfolio.

Tim