If, on the other hand, dealing with conflict is not your cup of tea, then a different revenue-generation strategy may be in order.  

@Mark Creason  I hear you.. but I would submit the experience level of your average commercial borrower and the average BP borrower who is trying to buy low value assets will be vastly different.. if your commercial borrower did not get a request to pay for those items then they would probably be skeptical.Like all the unsolicited crap we.. get I have played with a few of them for fun.you send one e mail back and they say you are approved for 5 million  LOL.. no one does that as we know... but there are inexperienced folks that just don't really know better and they want desperately to be RE investor and they get sucked in.I just close a loan with Lendinghome on a Dallas flip.. my first loan with someone other than my commercial bank in 20 years.. and they asked for I think 150 or 200 up front for a processing fee but they did their own evaluation on the collateral .. and of course I could check them out very easily they are in SF.Its the dreamers that really get taken on these scams.. and in your world its the guy who has no money bad credit but somehow tied up some big project that goes shopping for big money.. they will get sucked into sending bigger due diligence fees and never getting funding. 

THE RISK IN hml loans for the inexperienced is way too high.I think it would be more prudent to find a finacial planner from some of the national brokerage houses

The essence of a birddog is that they are an inexperienced person who probably knows little if anything about real estate and who is only passing leads onto a more experienced investor to process.So the spirit of the law is preserved because the consumer is not at risk, but the letter of the law is not.

Not really my cup of tea, but I see a lot of them out there, and claiming big numbers.

Keeping it simple, especially when you're relatively inexperienced isn't a bad thing.  

Just a few points from an inexperienced wannabe MHP investor (who just went through boot camp).  

You really need an inexperienced agent with little to no business wanting to go after anything else. 

To convince any lender to lend an inexperienced investor the amount of capital you are going to need to fund the purchase of land and cost to build, add in the extra time that you will need as a first timer dealing with building and zoning departments, additional costs for engineering, etc., then explaining that you want to use their money essentially to learn as you go just isn't going to happen imo.  

If you are new or inexperienced, it will probably be worth your time to get an inspection to rule out any huge surprises.Chris