Seed Capital
Has anyone used these people? Good or bad? I've heard that they have some upfront fees depending on how much you borrow?
I am in the process. They are good and bad so far. The salesperson tells you, sign up for Creditnav.com so we can see your credit report, cancel within 7 days to not be charged. Well, I am going on my second billing. The processor actually needed me to keep it active throughout the funding process. So far I have paid 29.99 and in a few days they will bill again another 29.99. Also Creditnav does not answer their phone. I have left the phone on hold for over an hour and you can't cancel except by phone or by mail. Luckily I live in Las vegas, so I will march my butt in there to cancel it eventually. They did get me 100,000 in CREDIT CARDS. It has been 20 days not 14 as they promise and I still have no liquid capital. I have a bunch of credit cards. By the way, the fee is $8995. and just so you know, as soon as you get "approved" "Not funded" for the money they say you will, they will charge that to one of your cards that they got you without permission. And they also tell you your payment will be about one percent on that 8995 so $90 bucks, but I just got my first bill and its 2%, so $180 per month and don't have any capital yet. Now please take this into mind, that if you borrow $100,000 off your cards, you will have the fees to use convenience checks... "I guess" as after 20 days they still have not told me how to liquidate my funds, but those checks are a 3-4% fee based on the amount you cash out. So that is an additional $3,000-4,000 in fees to use that money plus the monthly payments of around $2,000. This is 0 percent interest on the money, but I have now questioned whether I should have just found a good private money lender and paid them to use their money. This affected my credit about 20 points and I only did it to get proof of funds. They promise you a POF letter but its crap, it isn't proof of anything. I found a private money lender that gave me a great POF letter to use so I can at least write offers. So, think twice, because you need POF, but you don't want to draw 90% and put that in your account because you will be making those payments of 2% until you have a property and you will have paid $8995 plus $3000-4000 in fees plus creditnav and marketing. On the plus side, if you can afford the monthly payments, it is your money, interest free and the payments are principal only and you can also use these interest free lines for marketing capital. I will get back to you on how the funding process actually works.
I would be very careful with these types of companies. There are many that reduce the credit lines to just a bit above their charged fees at some point. You may end up with no credit to use and nothing but paynents to pay for fees charged.
@Elizabeth Hammack I actually ended up going with Seek (not Seed, I know haha) Capital LLC. There seems to be multiple companies that provide this kind of service. I'm not satisfied and I reported them to BBB, posted my experience on Rip Off Report and here on Bigger Pockets. I'm out the money since I signed a contract but yeah, lesson learned. Get knocked down and get back up the perks of being an entrepreneur!
@Matt Good I agree! This is why I take my precious time to post these comments to keep others from making mistakes that have already been made :)
Creditnav was highly recommended on another posting forum, and by someone whom I have a lot of respect for. I went through the process, and although I have a 755 credit score, I was flatly declined. No reasons, no explanation. I called to inquire and the customer service rep was fairly nice and professional. He did say that my credit score "was not within their standards". I'm not going to waste my time in pursuing this if that is how they operate.
Thank you Elizabeth and everyone for your thorough, honest answers. It is difficult to assess the "hidden fees" and really know who you are dealing with on this company. I always ask upfront, but it is not always clear. I originally contacted this company through "Funding For Flipping", which I had a free consultation with. Then I get a followup email from some completely different company and individual. At this point, I do not have a high level of trust with the multi-layers.
It appears, the company goes by several names etc. WCAP financial funding; www.seedcapital.com or www.businessloan.org . To initiate the process, you must give a credit card and sign up for credit report at www.creditnav.com. before they will talk to you about your loan. I did not do this, so I cannot speak from first hand experience. As I mentioned to them on my intro call, I was very skeptical about signing up for a credit report and giving them a credit card for a 29.95 monthly fee. Even though you can cancel in 7 days supposedly, I don't know how long their vetting process takes so you may be stuck with one or two fees. I am totally OK with a $29.95 fee. I understand people's time is valuable... but they need to disclose the fees upfront and not bury it in their multi-level processes. Your answer gave me a lot more insight to the way they work.
They have a lot of positive testimonials and seem to have worked very well for some, but I do not think it is a good fit for me. I also asked for phone numbers of referrals, which they were unable to give me.
This is a follow up to my above post as I am now at the end of the funding process:
For you all :)
The sales guys do not give you much of the FACTUAL information, they make it sound so easy, but here are some of the positives and negatives, because there are so many details, I will walk you through the process.
The credit is ALL CREDIT CARDS
They told me that I was approved for 80-120k, in fact I ended up with 60k liquid
Once you are sold the product, they send you to another person that now gives you step by step directions on how to draw the money out
The first thing I thought was deceptive is that when I received my first cards in the mail, they asked me for a copy of the front and back of the cards "for credit increase requests."
They never got me any increases, but they immediately charged their $8995 fee to one of my cards. Keep in mind they said we pay this when we get "funded" not when we receive our "credit cards."
The bad thing about this is that you get your first credit card bill for their fee balance pretty much before you have any money that is liquid or have bought a property or whatever. Luckily I had a small amount of money in the bank, but this can be stressful for broke people if they think they are getting zero percent money and now they have a first credit card bill that has to be paid monthly before they can use the money to make money
My process ended up ok, but I had a rough road of things like this happening that really were stressful, things they could have just thoroughly told us up front
Next, I had a credit check card with a check that was not zero percent, but it was approved up to 30,000, but you can only charge your card up to a certain percentage on each line, so she said go deposit a check for 28,000
once it deposits, do two balance transfers from two other cards to pay it off. Sounds great, but just keep in mind that the bank accepting the transfer has up to 4 weeks to process it, so I when my credit card bill came, they had charged me $90.00 in interest for this layover on the 28,000
Oh, don't forget each credit card check and some of the balance transfers charge a fee usually 3% or 4%. In the 28,000 case, if I did it within 30 days of approval, there was no fee, but they charged me the 9.24 % interest for the days I had borrowed it
However, I have had about $2000 in fees charged on my other checks and balance transfers, these have to be paid, they are not interest free
And the credit card bills start coming. I finally figured out you can pay those bills with the money that you cashed out ( I keep it all in a separate account so I don't get confused on what is NOT mine)
Again, if you are very nervous about your credit as I am (it knocked about 20 points off mine) and worried about owing people and paying credit card bills coming in before you have enough cash to buy anything with, this is very stressful.
So I actually paid all of the transfer fees, I still owe about 8500 to my Discover for Seed Capital, I have about 57,000 in the bank, which really isn't enough to buy anything, so I still have to use hard money, but at least I have a down payment right? and I have to pay those 9 credit card bills every month out of my liquid capital.
Its kind of a conundrum. The process took about 2.5 months to get all the cash out with moving money from here to there.
The girl at seed was a little hard to get ahold of, and once I did all the cash out, I have not heard from her again. Not that I need her right now.
I hope this helps. Bottom line, if you are broke, don't do this, you need a little money to pay the extra fees or you are just getting in stressful debt. This program really costs about 13,000 when you add the transaction fees, the 8995 to Seed and the bits of interest you will be charged. Also, you don't get near what they say, I had FICO scores over 800 and they got me approved for 133,000 in credit cards, but you can't use some of it except for purchases and you can only as out like 85% so all in all I ended up with 60,000
so if you are fully knowledgeable of this, and do it, keep about 10,000 aside (which only gives me 50k now) to make credit card payments.
It does work though :)
Have a blessed day!
Wow, this has to be one of the worst products/scams going. I hope all people with no/low credit read this thread and stay as far away from "services" such as these. Who runs these things? Sound like a mob thing to me.
Thank you @Elizabeth Hammack for the update! I have a feeling that these companies, and there are several different ones that do the SAME thing, won't be around for long. I ended up getting blackmailed by one of them TWICE by the "CEO" after I gave them a lovely review on BBB and Rip Off Report. SHADY!!
I am so glad to have joined BP! I just got off the phone with Seed Capital and after the conversation decided that I would search the forums for information on this topic. I appreciate the thorough breakdown of the 'pros' and 'cons' and at this point, I think I will utilize alternate forms of funding if possible.
Thank you so much!
Company worked on my behalf obtaining unsecured credit using an email they created never allowing me access. Obtained a credit increase on a credit card they obtained by decreasing the credit balance on an existing card I had with that bank I never authorized this. Requested a copy of the original signed agreement with them (never received one) was told I already had it. Requested what information they were using to obtain credit increases on credit cards they obtained for me was told again I already have it (have no idea where that information is as it was never provided to me). Substantially decreased my credit score by obtaining these accounts, this was never addressed in the original agreement. Told service representative original income would be considerably less due to a first quarter correction in my income very concerned they still used it after being told it was less.
Thank you @Elizabeth Hammack for posting this!
Incredibly helpful.
Thank you, Elizabeth
@Elizabeth Hammack, I really appreciate your walkthroughs of the process you went through. This helped me decide not to go through with the process. I had already done the credit report and had been talking with one of their representatives, but as I don't have the cash saved to cover the payments up front that come with their fees I would have really been in a tough spot. Thank you for documenting your experience, you may have saved a lot of people from getting into a very stressful financial situation.
In reference to @Sandra Hale and her comments on the Credit Nav. No, they dont get it done in 7 days so plan on paying at leaset one month of Credit Nav you are correct on that.
Also an update that the high credit lines actually affected my credit scores from 800 down to the 690 range. BE aware of that. The ultimate goal is to get one property to pay the 13,000 that it cost you to borrow and a profit right? ha
On @Craig Baker comments, they did create an email for me, but I did have access to it. I also did get copies of everything signed. They have all of our personal info on the original paperwork, and from our credit nav report plus the income you filled out. And yes, they will use the amount of income specified, their focus was to get the money, even if it isnt honest, I didnt like this aspect either :(
Good luck everyone!
Yes, avoid Seed Capitol. No bueno.
Wow, I am so happy Bigger Pockets provides this website with informative learning opportunities. My business partner just spoke with a WCAP representative and I decided to research the company. And, as always BP has saved me money and financial pain! If you check BBB website for UT there are at least six complaints on WCAP, which several address the company's services, products, and guarantees.
I want to thank everyone on this discussion who provided information and facts on WCAP -- because knowledge is power. @Allan Smith thanks for your feedback.
@Elizabeth Hammack Great thread thanks for the information. I too was researching them and so glad I found this post. Were the credit cards from Banks or Credit Card companies? How many did they actually sign you up for?
PS:
So, all in all, I ended up feeling satisfied that I learned these tricky tricks of the trade even though it came at about a $13,000 cost overall. The problem is that that sales people did not explain everything (true cost, major hit to credit, paying bills you cant afford) properly which caused me so much stress in the process. If I had just gone direct to Lana the girl that helped me after I was SOLD the product, I would have understood what I was going to face much better as she is the one that actually assists with the process of funding.
The problem with doing it yourself, is that it all has to be done fast before inquiries hit your credit reports. They did something with my bureaus, like they would freeze one bureau, probably to keep it from being reported, that part I dont know... they DO know what they are doing, the sales guys just dont tell you everything.
Her is the rep I was assigned, maybe you can avoid all the hassle by talking with her direct ?
I think I also ended up finding them through fundingforflipping.com
Lana Djukic
Originally posted by @Christopher Graham:
@Elizabeth Hammack Great thread thanks for the information. I too was researching them and so glad I found this post. Were the credit cards from Banks or Credit Card companies? How many did they actually sign you up for?
I ended up with 7 credit cards
The end to this story is that I was able to buy a property with the "credit card" funding. What I ended up doing was having to buy something under 150k because that is the only price range in which I could use the cash I got from the credit cards for a down payment on hard money. I used Joel at Lantzman funding which was a very smooth experience and the fees are lower than most I interviewed. Plus he was willing to provide me with a proof of funds/liquid capital letter for making offers. They lend approximately 65% of the after repair value which is a nice formula. So with a 140k purchase, I had to put down around 40k with all costs fees and escrow. This is nervewracking again due to the fact that if you dont move the propery quickly you could be stuck with 40k in credit card debt locked up in a property and the 0% interest promos can expire. So watch your timelines. The cards ended up affecting my credit scores by about 120 points. But, now that it has been almost a year and I have paid them all on time, the scores are steadily going back up. This deal I ended up making enough to cover all my startup costs plus a little profit. I also learned something, so it can work, if you are prepared to pay those check fees and transfer fees and the payments on the startup fee.
@Elizabeth Hammack congrats on your story. It is impressive the amount of risk you were willing to take to get it all done. First get credit cards then use hard money!
Sounds like the Seed Capital thing worked out in the end.
I have only tried hard money once (not the best experience). Now, I only use credit cards / lines of credit and private lenders friends and wealthy individuals.
Just a couple thoughts that may help you:
1) Probably the reason why your credit got hit so hard is because you have high utilizations on your credit cards. As you pay those down your score will go up.
2) If you get business credit cards and start to transition to using them, they will not show up on your personal credit. I have a blend of both, but I am working on shifting to all business credit.
I am so happy that I read this thread. I have a meeting set up with the CEO today in an hour. He was going to provide me the contract and go over the details. After reading everyone's response and doing some additional research I now know that I will not pursue this funding direction. Thanks BP!!
Has anyone used FundingForFlipping? If so, please tell me your experience.
@Robert Politzer Funding for Flipping is a brand extension of Seed Capital. Same stories should apply.