First, find a California attorney well versed in private lending transactions, not just a good real estate attorney, and not an attorney who has represented institutional lenders in conventional residential closings.

who is simply a loan expert, working for a lending institution.

@Eugene Kemp there are many institutional lenders that are between conventional and hard money if you have a little extra time to close 

Length of the loan varies between each institution and some lenders have junk fees or balloon payments.

I've known the gentlemen for 18 years and the home has no mortgage so there is no risk of due-on-sale claus from a financial institution on his side. 

How can these institutional flippers make it at the prices they are paying? 

Grant Cardone is a sales person and be aware he gets a lot of institutional money at very low rate of return so he has no reason to compete with smaller syndicators and his returns are way lower than normal syndicators and also you want to have a direct relationship with your syndicators which you can not have with GC.

At some point it is not worth it for a sponsor to do a deal.Also there is institutional money that will give out cash all day long but of course the terms can be tougher.

True hard money is asset based and not institutionally underwritten.

--The lender, usually but not always a Bank, (Something institutional:  Credit Union, Mortgage Co/servicer, CMBS,  CDC, Local Housing non-profit,  church group, etc.)