Shaun can't totally agree there, you may be familiar with your institution, but we try to speak on a wider national spectrum. 85% LTV on a SFR will have PMI and they too want skin in the game, PMI goes away generally at 80% LTV.

Another clean way Rick, thanks for the compliments, lots of ways to skin a deal...LOL

The hard money lender will simply make sure you are qualified for the refinance, and make sure you have "skin in the game"",,they know the more money you have tied up in the project, the slower you will be to walk away.If your going to hold a property for any length of time, you don't want transitional funding, you want a hard money/private money lender,,but yes, you have to be qualified to refinance to a traditional mortgage because they want to get their money out

However, the lower down payment means you have higher debt service on your larger mortgage and generally also means that you'll get less favorable terms on that financing (iow, if you have little or no skin in the game, you are a high-risk borrower -- perhaps higher rate, more points, shorter term?).

Great topic... so we have found the more skin in the game- the stronger the tenant.

The disadvantage to traditional financing is that you need to have more skin in the game in most places.I would not spend all your cash if you can help it.

It's called having skin in the game..

Perhaps, but depends on how much skin in the game you have.Looks like a spread worth doing to me.A few questions for determining to move forward would be time involved to get through the red tape in your area, how long from start to finish, any costs other than the dirt and $100 per sq. ft.Type of financing the buyer will be using.For a lender: Likely will not go beyond 70% of value, and if you plan to spec build, you may want to check out some local banks and see if you buy the dirt, perhaps they will do a construction loan and cut your lender costs in half.

As Ned Carey, your monthly cashflow amount depends on how much skin you have in the game.

They do want skin in the game (in my case 13K) and a lot of their fees are due at closing and are not wrapped up into the loan (11K).There have to be different examples of using hard money, this is based on what I was presented for a flip opportunity but I thought it might give you a rough idea of the hard money aspect, especially for newbies (my rate was higher because it was my first deal with them but they said it would drop after two deals 14% to 10%).Hope this helps and I'm sure others have better examples.