All Forum Posts by: Boris Grinberg

and if you are an electrician, why would you borrower money, pay interest and pay yourself? 

Yes, Typically, the draws for construction reimbursement work like that. Borrower pays 10k, submits receipts for reimbursement. Lender verifies it and pays it to the borrower or to the contractor directly.

@Karen K.  We are hard money lender and we offer construction loans. We would finance all expenses but not the work that your husband would do. Lets assume that he is a an electrician and he buys stuff for 10K and, the work he puts in is worth roughly 5K (if other electricians would have done the work). We can finance 10k , but we would not finance 5k of his work.

@Paul Winka .. a lot of good advises here. I say move to where you have friends and family. You will learn the the real estate business and will find deals everywhere but it takes time. Being surrounded by the close one to you is more important.. Just a humble opinion..

I am looking for an attorney who has experience with modular/MH housing in NJ. 

agree with @Sabi Const. I am a hard money lender and real estate investor for many years. However, on my last deal real estate investment deal, quite a few things went wrong. As oppose to being 6-12 months project, it is now at least 18 months. It went from a profitable deal to a race to just recover my investment. I have cash to support the transaction and i have very low cost conventional mortgage with a good LTV loan. I can only imagine what would have happened to me if it was my first deal and I was fully maxed on cards or had a Hard money loan. No one is immune from unforeseen events.

For every success story, there are plenty of set backs/bad stories that nobody posts on BP.

Just a humble opinion....

@Timothy N. HML usually offer loans for non-owner occupied properties to avoid regulatory limitations. Some still do it though, so you need to find the one that is willing to do it. You comment about home equity line to pay off your HML is not clear. Why don't you just get a conventional mortgage when your rehab work is complete?

@Charlie DiLisio, underwriting HML loan requires a lot of manual work so it takes the same amount of time for us to underwrite 50K loan of 500K loan. Infrastructure for most HML lenders is nowhere as efficient as one for conventional lenders so it is quite expensive to originate a loan. We did the math, and anything below100K is not ideal but we go as low as 75K for some clients.

Nothing to do with the risk, it is just not profitable enough to support the infrastructure. 

Darius, what you describe usually takes place between two investors: one found a deal but doesn't have enough money so he/she brings a JV partner with money.

As a lender, it doesn't mean we would not entertain an equity investment. We take a look at deals all the time as we are a small shop and we also have some investors that are happy to look at deals. But the majority of HML are there to lend.

@Jay Hinrichs .. very interesting debate. I fully agree with your comment about non-refundable fees and another one that it takes time to develop the skill set required to succeed in real estate and there is no reason to rush. But as the American dream encourages immediate gratification, guys/girls are willing to go all in. I lost a deal today to a guy who ended up going for 100% financing with 4% upfront (plus expenses) and 16% rate for a min of 1 year. His logic was simple, this is my first deal, i put no money down, if I am right - I make money, if I am wrong - my credit is dead for a while so he was willing to take that bet...