Do you use a bank or private lender?

I have a very flexible private money lender who is willing to provide funds to acquire a house at auction. 

I have used findtheseller.com and Private eye.com. 

No commercial lenders will talk to you at the $20K level (about $50-60K would be the bottom end), but private money and some hard money lenders might be an option.Flipping of houses is considered a business and is therefore not entirely tax-sheltered in the IRA. 

Private and hard money lenders also want to see that you have "skin in the game."

Seems like a lot of effort for ($15000*0.03+$15000*.16/2) = $1,650.Divide $1650 by how many hours this will take, compare that to your normal day-job wage.That being said, if you want to get into private lending then it might make sense as a fairly low-risk (assuming you follow the advice of others in this thread) "learning experience," that's not crazy. 

I do have a private loan that’s now about 65% of what we paid.Thanks for any and all experience and knowlege!

I get them from my commercial bank at 1 point and 6.. but I had a bigger deal were I needed 7 mil and went shopping private and 2 and 12 to 4 and 14 is what I found for a dirt horizontal loan... but my bank came around and is going to do It for me.. 

I don’t have a good enough credit score to get a traditional mortgage (my credit history is not very old) so I’m pretty certain my best bet at getting started will be by working with a private/hard money lender.

As far as financing is a bank loan my best bet,, do private lenders or hard money ever fund high LTV for a buy and hold?