Hello everyone I'm a newbie, sort of, to real estate investing.

if you were in my shoes and financial situation what would you do to get this deal done.now i know i'm a beginning investor but in order to even get any sort of a hard money loan right you must first have the property in question under some sort of contract first (to show your interest/control in the property and etc)this is what puzzles me when people say to first get a pre-qual or pre-approval letter from say a hard money lender, because from my research almost all of them loan on the deal at hand (well the property) that you already have under contractnow a pre-approval letter from a bank you can literally go shopping for different properties within that budget, but like i said from my research on hard money lenders right you must first have the property in question under contract and then seek to see if they'll loan you the moneyso once again what should i do, well what would you do in this situation?

Many will add all sorts of junk fees to your costs.

The big players (lawyers, accountants, etc) are already involved in these sorts of deals.2.

Two people can say the same thing, but one can say it in a "we're all screwed" sort of way, which you did, or a "well...yes there are problems and we must prepare, so do THIS" fashion as I did.

Maybe even a realty/investment company of some sort.

He would tell me sales prices of houses selling for 500k-1M on Grandview Ave in Pittsburgh he had the chance to buy for 50k 30 some years ago.When i was about 18 i started looking for my first project(rehab) hoping if i found the right deal i could sell it to a family member there were 4 amazing houses i came across but could not sell the idea to anyone there was even one house an old lady gene a friend of mine was going to sell me for $2500 that was rentable as is i could not come up with the money and she was scammed buy the RE investor i learned so much from he saw a good deal and took it. the house hunt never stopped i started showing more houses to my mom and she became more interested. 2005 was a terrible year along with a slow work year construction wise i lost my best friend, grandmother and father then my house ,car everything but my dog due to funeral expense's i realized life was to short and i would not wait to get into this business anymore i moved back in with my mom and became even more motivated to get a rehab going i showed my mom a property in summer 2006 and she became interested and helped me get the house it was almost condemned we bought it for 6k and brought it back from the dead if you visit my myspace page its the yellow house on the slide show Ive since done 2 more and I'm ready for many more I've decided this wont be a hobby i sleep RE literally. ill live in the streets if that means i can keep building this dream.

.$130,000 Purchase price $2,600 Purchase closing costs $25,000 repairs $12,600 interest (computed on above items, 16%, 6 mo, $157,600) $11,900 points (computed on above items, 7 points on $170,000) $3,000 holding costs (insurance, taxes, utilities) $17,600 sales closing costs (6% for agents, 2% for other costs)$202,700 total costs$220,000 sales price $17,300 potential profitThat's sort of a worst case for the hard money costs.

My guess (and my realtor sort of confirmed this) is that the market is whacked out due to the after effects of Hurricane Katrina.

I think that sort of party animal is known as a pre-hibernating bear.REI- I know the Santa Teresa area alright!