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

Do you use traditional financing or do you us DSCR loans?

If you're a single mom with student loans, a car payment, and living paycheck-to-paycheck, then $20,000 would be devastating and a reserve is critical.

The good news is you don't need a specialty loan for a house hack, just a traditional primary home loan.

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

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?

I answered a question yesterday by saying "DSCR loans are like belly buttons...everybody's got one."

We generally advise our clients to go ahead and pay the recapture rates if death is the alternative.The good news about recapture - the deductions are a deferred tax liability to you, and an interest free loan from the government.

So you are talking about a loan of $200K.

The refinance step is where you pull out this equity, typically in the form of a cash-out refinance.Here’s how it works:You refinance the property at its new appraised value (after rehab and renting).You take out a new loan based on that increased value, ideally for the full amount or more than what you originally paid for the property.The goal is to pull out enough money to cover the cost of the original purchase and rehab (or even more, depending on the property’s appreciation).This allows you to recover your initial investment, which can then be used to buy your next property.5.