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Are you planning on renting or selling it?

What type of investment is it?

Exactly. What goes around, comes around.

I think the real estate apprentice wanted signs in my city are hilarious. Most of them promise $10,000 - $15,000 a month. The best part is that they are all made with posterboard and a sharpie. You'd think that someone raking in that kind of dough could afford to get a real sign made.

Of course, something tells me that the "mentors" doing the advertising have never actually made money in real estate...

I guess the point is you find a "rule of thumb" that works for you and you use it to screen out all of the totally unacceptable properties, not to make a final decision.

My rule of thumb is based on probable cash flow. I know what rents are in my neck of the woods so I use that as a guess, and I just assume that expenses are 35% of gross income.

I wrote a little program for my Pocket PC where I just punch in my assumptions about the loan and operations and it it spits out what my cash flow would be. If cash flow is positive, or close to positive I call the lister or owner to get real numbers.

Hard money lenders tend to be private individuals (or small groups). Most of the hard money lenders I have talked to lend for the short term only, almost always for less than a year and usually only for 1-3 months.

Pros: As was mentioned, a hard money lender does not generally look at your credit score. You might be able to borrow 100% of your purchase price.

Cons: You pay a ton in interest. For example, recently a hard money lender approached some investors we work with. They wanted a 10% return, due at the end of three months. They quite often want the loan secured by real assets, your car or house or whatever.

If you know you can buy a property and turn it quickly at huge profit, and you can't get a standard mortgage, it might be one way to go. Some investors use hard money to get into the property, do some quick fixes to raise the property value, then get a new loan (based on the property's new, improved value) from a bank to pay off the hard money lender.

The more systemtatic you are in your approach to running apartments, the less the details will drown you.

When loaning money, the bank wants to safeguard itself as best as possible. They have to know payments are going to be made. Your credit history is a big part of that. If you have no credit, you may indeed need a co-signer.

If you want to help your case, you need to have a definate plan. Show the bank exactly how you are going to make money so that you can pay them back.

Be as thorough as possible. What are you going to do with the land? Are you going to subdivide it and sell it as building lots? Put in an RV Park? What is your plan for operating?

The better you can make your case, the more likely you are to get the loan. And the more likely you are to succeed, too.

The link should be http://www.reicasting.com/ without that extra period.

There are ton of resources out there. I'd look around for deals, then research out everything that comes up.

The way you avoid getting over your head is by looking carefully at the numbers of every deal you come across. Only invest in things where you are sure the risk is small. Never get in to an investment just because you really like the house or the area or you're pretty sure that eventually property values around there are going to go up. Make sure that it is purely a financial desicion.