I would look into house-hacking with a 5% down CHAMP loan or a 3.5% down FHA loan.

Many hard money lenders are hesitant to provide loans solely for land acquisition, and conventional loans have been somewhat limiting, especially for land deals.What is best strategies for raising private funds.

But the ones that did had very good W 2 so they had the cash and income to qualify for loans.

You create a loan from your Roth IRA for say 20,000. 

IMOHML also better be careful about calling a residential loan a commercial loan as well.

I'm wondering how private lenders get taxed on their earned interest as they loan money to RE investors.

Unless, like he mentioned, the house is in poor condition and won't qualify for a bank loan that a typical buyer would need. 

If there are 100% loans... why isn't everyone doing this?

NOI, and thus cap rate, feeds into how much of a down payment is required b/c it feeds into the "sizing" of the loan.Many asset classes, like apartments and offices, have less than ideal in place cap rates today, so you need 35% or 50% down to buy them (unlike a DTI-based home loan, your personal W2 income cannot be used to significantly offset).

You'll want to be able to obtain balances, confirm payments were received, obtain payoff statements, etc.Ask your friend to share the username and password for the servicer's websiteI recommend using a loan servicer to collect your payments and disperse payments each month to the underlying mortgage servicer.