I’m a mortgage broker and I’m using a hard money company to refi two of my borrowers. I have been having a hard time with them, they never answer the phone nor do they ever do what they say they will do. Now they are telling me that my clients need to release the funds the sent for the loans from the escrow so that they can close. Does that sound right? Are hard money guys really like that or am I and my borrowers being takened for a ride?
Not really. I work with hard money lenders EVERY day. You should really spend some time questioning them and finding out what they are all about before you start send deals to them. Real hard money leders are loan sharks and are in this business fro the same reason that you are. If you watch entourage they are like the Ari Golds of the mortgage biz and are easly seperated from the others out there.
They can be a bit pushy at times, but remind them that you are bringing business to them.
Good Luck
Sounds like thompson1003 has been stung by the hard money lenders out there a few times. Seems like everyone has a story of someone who’s been burned by a lender that charged an upfront fee and backed out of a deal.
We’ve closed many deals with hard money and private money lenders. The key is to work with the reputable ones who’s deals you can verify.
In addition, it helps to know their formulas when valuing property. Most hard money lenders discount appraisals to shorter present values, and often subtract points, attorney fees, and broker fees from the loan amount.
To get back to david’s topic, i would be very leary of doing business with anyone who doesn’t return your phone calls promptly. You should know that being a mortgage broker yourself. Would you let a viable deal sit on the table unfunded?
I have never worked with a hard money lender before. I am currently looking and researching hard money lenders in California. Besides questioning integrity, what other items should I look for that will help me get a deal closed with a hard money lender?
If you do enough of these deals you’ll find a few that you can go back to with most of your deals.
There are new hard money lenders popping up every day, but if you can establish a relationship with a few of them you should be covered.
Until then, i’d find out a few things:
How many deals they’ve funded overall
How many deals of your type have they funded
Is there outstanding litigation against them
do they have a track record of simply taking fees and not funding deals
how does their process work: do they have upfront fees, exit fees, do they want equity in your project, what is the interest rate, terms, points, default rate, prepayment penalty, etc.
Do a google search to check out the company, ask them and brokers on the site if they’ve worked with that company before, ask for references or people who might have used their services, do lexis-nexis searches, search public records, hire a lawyer to check them out.
send me their name in a pm and i’ll tell you if i’ve dealt with them.
good luck,
Craig
What is lexis-nexis?
lexis nexis is an internet based search engine. It’s used by colleges, law firms, government, etc. to search information systems and public information like pending litigation, current and past litigation, judgments, corp docs, etc.
Powerful tool, but also expensive to operate.
We use it for diligence on people and companies.