Obtaining private funds, or hard money, for investment purposes is kind of like obtaining employment when you are younger... everyone wants experience that you don't have, but you can't get experience until someone give you the opportunity to gain experience.

Your purpose is to make money if their rents are below market they are getting a free ride and you need to get them to full market asap.

I wrote the above for informational purposes.

If you're ok with appraisals and all the other jazz, what's the purpose of hard money?

Look at it this way:From what I keep reading in this site is the Cali lovers buy properties with negative cashflow for appreciation purposes.

Most of these started as leveraged but I paid them off strategically and on purpose because of the unfavorable commercial terms, higher seller-financed risk or old higher rate commercial mortgages above 6.5%. 

@Angela SalvantHello there,I’m doing something similar, I’m moving to Detroit in September for investing purposes.

., for comparison purposes, a friend of mine is currently in contract on a 6-unit bldg in SF for $1.6M.

Judges are fallible and make stupid calls with regularity, as evidenced by the idiotic judgment that corporations are people for political purposes.

*For the purpose of this post, assume "investing" to mean "buy and hold large multifamily apartments", and "developing" to be large commercial or large multifamily (not single-family)*Investing and developing both require extensive market analysis to ensure that the area you plan to have property in is a sensible location.