Hey community, I am exploring starting a hard money lending business and wanted to start a thread for all advice on the topic (including what not to do or tools not to use).  

Definitely start jumping into the community here and feel free to ask any questions related to Real Estate investing!

I called the Division Manager at the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

Thanks so much and I am glad to be apart of the BP community now as this is my first post!!!!!

@Richard Lee You may be interested in looking into Carnegie Mellon and what it is doing in the local community as well as renting to large base of grad students and/or high income workers.

Talk to community banks, credit unions, or other investors in your area.

Thank you Hi Mary this is a different topic thread but Fannie used to count all properties in entities as "financed properties," as long as you owned more than 25% in that entity as documented by your annual K1 form which your LP/LLC/Scorp/flow through entity will show your ownership percentage.This meant that even if the mortgage note was in the LLC's name and the title was in the LLC's name you'd still be hit with these properties as financed properties as long as you owned more than 25% of the company/entity.Fannie has evolved their language on how they count financed properties in late 2017.Now their emphasis is on you being "personally obligated," on the note or basically if you're personally obligated on the note/mortgage/paper instrument.A real life experience or example is that most local credit unions or community banks that use the same loan origination software  will make you sign make you sign the mortgage note as a manager of your LLC however the personal guarantee (PG) is a separate document.

Hello Bigger Pockets community!

New to the BP community, looking to meet some interesting motivated people around the Saint Louis and Saint Charles County area.

Hi,    I have an investment townhouse in PA on a golf resort community which came with what I believe to be a deeded garage.