Individuals, brokers, banks, any lender needs to act at arm's length with collateral.

The only way you can do that is by knowing the note, the borrower, the collateral and the circumstances.

I'm thrilled to see that many of the normal day-to-day activities that we carry out as real estate investors are portrayed correctly such as:- Evicting families from their homes at gunpoint- Hiring formerly evicted and desperate occupants to do dangerous and illegal work at low wage- Attending high end parties while the human collateral of immoral yet immensely profitable real estate decisions duke it out in the slums...Hopefully you can tell that I'm joking here and that I'm not very happy with what I perceive to be a very unfair portrayal of real estate investing, investors, and how real estate investing business is conducted. 

I spoke to a local lender who told me that cd's could be collateralized for loans of 80% total ARV.  

Schedule D states describes the property and the "Value of Property Subject to Lien" as $0; Amount of Claim Without Deducting Value of Collateral $50k; UNSECURED PORTION, IF ANY $50K.So, is the lien in place, or not?

However, the catch is that the HML will require you to put some money into the escrow as a collateral.

Then isn't the loan much greater than the value of the collateral at closing?

Typically a portfolio lender will make the call based off the assets, I would try doing as many as possible because each time you need to acquire another property and use the others to cross collateralize they might want to re-evaluate each one...But not all banks will do this to begin with. id lay out your biz plan and the cash / net worth you have to several banks, but likely they won't be able to do much until you have put properties under agreement.

Pay attention to any statements that mention “risk to the bank’s collateral or security” (queasy stomach clauses) and make sure you understand you may get cash calls if your LTV drops.  

Eventually turn those collateral assignmentsinto partial note purchases.