We live in Kihei now since the Lahaina fire destroyed our home, office and an investment condo.

A lender is the middle man who will sell your loan to the big banks and in most cases charge you points and higher fee's to support the branch and loan officers commissions.

@Albert Gallucci as many have pointed out, in the commercial space of 100+ apartment buildings and offices, property classes have some pretty decent industry standards.We started applying these to 1-4 unit properties around 10 years ago, which you can verify on our blogs, because we saw too many newbie investors not properly taking into account things like, neighborhood status, tenant pool, property condition, etc.Unfortunately, there's no industry standard for this, but you can use some basic logic to think your way through your own Classifications.

However, someone brought up an idea that i wanted to run by this group. 

Unfortunately - my current lot for my primary is 1 acre and VERY sloped, and close to a water source (creek), so the county has not even allowed me to permit my downstairs finished basement without an extremely costly renovation to our septic (over $60,000, and that doesn't count demo'ing and replacing our driveway to get to the existing tank and leachfield), and even if I could permit it, it would essentially need to be a treehouse in the redwoods due to the slope (not a bad idea though, I would actually love a livable treehouse on this lot!

I was able to look up the life estate deed from the appraisers office and read it.

It'd be a good idea to work with lenders who have found their niche working with investors.

Hey Chris,This is the website: https://suncrestcapitalgroup.com/Ive been dealing with Kevin Barrios.They have office based out of Florida.I checked BBB and couldn't find them. 

We liked the idea of partnership on a bigger project with the specific MTR strategy in order to increase NOI and exit in 3-5 years.

I like their portal, because I feel that I am able to have a good idea of the status in processing of my loans, but I would be intentional about the loan officer I work with.