Hi @Vincent Plant,You've gotten some great advice on what to look for in a hard money loan.

There's no current loan on it right now.

you can use a DSCR loan if your DTI is too high for conventional. 

House care, lawn care, condition of cars, street conditions, absence of pay-day loan shops... basically all the things you look for when determining where to live yourself. 

Well it is doing loans for folks who bought sight unseen and trusted contractors/turnkey providers who sell the dream but in the end do the absolute min in rehab work (even though charge for a much better job) and/or sell a buyer on a class B type neighborhood that is  reality a class D neighborhood in an already low income town.

Use tools like the VA loan for house hacking and your Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) to cover living costs while building equity.

It may or may not show on a credit report, depends on the servicing and you should have the loan serviced.Failure to include the debt on a future loan application is mortgage fraud, wanna go to jail?

If the loan is being paid the seller/previous owner has no reason to want off of the loan.

Loan interest is deductible based on the use of the loan, not the asset securing the loan. 

A couple of months ago, I purchased a property using a hard money loan for $115,000.