We use the Dream Team Checklist to remind us to continue to expand out and strengthen existing relationships we have with key dream team members that will help us accomplish more as real estate investors.
Unlike many of our other checklists that give you action steps, this one lists some of the key dream team members to encourage you to reach out and make contact with professionals that will make your life easier and more profitable.
Whether you use it as a reminder to ask your existing dream team for referrals or recommendations in those areas or as a list of folks to seek out and interview on your own, you will find the list to be a great resource for improving your real estate investing business.
Here is a very abridged list of key dream team members from our much larger list:
- Accountant/Bookkeeper
- Administrative Assistant
- Appraiser
- Attorney
- Contractors
- Lenders (Traditional Brokers, Hard Money, Private Money)
- Insurance Agent
- Property Manager
- Real Estate Agent/Broker
- Real Estate Wholesalers
- Title Company
Until my next post,
James
I just had lunch with an friend of mine that is also a real estate investor yesterday and we were discussing finding hard money lenders. It was not too long ago that hard money lenders were everywhere and it was relatively easy to find ones that would do 100% of purchase price and repairs based solely on the property. Today, it is a bit different.
I am going to share with you the slow way and the faster way. First, the slow way: if you go through the phone book, search on the internet and call a hundred plus hard money lenders I think you can still find one that is flexible enough for the right deal.
However, there is a huge shortcut… what if instead of doing all that legwork yourself, you go to your local investor club and call all your investor contacts and ask for recommendations of hard money lenders they’ve used that are still doing that. Don’t have a ton of contacts? Consider using an Absentee Owner list and doing a voice broadcast or postcard to them to get together and network.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. To get access to our extensive training library of over 100 real estate courses plus much more, upgrade to Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership today.
I recently got a call from one of our non-local real estate agents who works with some of our investors in another market and she asked me if I knew a good source for hard money in her area. Many hard money lenders will only lend in their local market or to people that they know and have an established relationship with. So, I could not refer her to work with the hard money lenders that I have in my local market.
With the recent pro-investor changes in the seasoning guidelines for buying HUD properties and reselling them, I feel that hard money will be key for many investors to quickly gain control of these deals in order to do some fix up and immediately resell them to end buyers. So, finding great hard money lenders in your local market will be an important tool for investing in HUD properties.
So, here’s the short and the long answer to how to find hard money lenders to buy properties.
The short answer is that I am always actively looking for hard money lenders to share with our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members. If you are a hard money lender and want to lend money to our investors, contact me directly.
The long answer is that you can find hard money lenders yourself by networking with other local investors at your local real estate clubs and associations. You can also find private lenders by talking to people you know about the deal you are looking at and asking them if they know of someone who might be willing to lend money on it. You can also search out hard money lenders in the “money to lend” section of your local newspapers (check all of them) and through on-line classified websites. Of course, a good mortgage broker that works with investors will also have access to hard money lenders.
As an aside, we do provide extensive training on how to raise private money for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members inside the Real Estate Investor Wiki.
While we continue to seek out additional hard money lenders, I encourage you to find one yourself using the tips above. If you find a great one, let me know about them as well so I can share them with others. If you find a bad one (and there are some out there), let me know about them too so I can tell people to avoid using them.
Until my next post,
James
Hard money loans are available from a variety of sources.
First, check with your local real estate investor group. This is a great place to network with other investors and find out where they get their hard money loans.
You can also look in your local newspaper under the “money to lend” section.
Additionally, your mortgage broker may be able to put you in touch with some hard money lenders, or, he may even broker hard money himself.
You might also consider another source for your hard money needs: Yourself.
That’s right. You probably have access to money that you never thought about using to finance your real estate investments. Here are two possibilities:
Credit cards – If you have a substantial amount of untapped credit, chances are that you regularly receive offers for three to six month long teaser rates. This could be a great way to get the money that you need at a substantially better interest rate than a hard money lender would give you. But remember, as with all hard money loans, it’s a short-term proposition. You need to get in and out and pay off your credit cards before the teaser period ends and the interest rate spikes.
Home equity loan or line of credit: Do you own your own home? If yes, and you have some equity in it, you might consider borrowing against it to do your hard money deal. Again, it will probably be at a lower interest rate than a hard money lender would give you. If you get a line of credit, this can be an ongoing source of money to finance deals. Once you finish a deal, pay back the money and it’s ready for the next time.
Remember too, that just like private investor loans, you can always encounter new sources for hard money by talking to lots of people about what you are doing. Put the word out that you are in the market for hard money, and you are bound to find some lenders.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. For our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members, we discuss a variety of ways to finance your deals from owner financing, private money, traditional loans, hard money and more creative offer structuring. Plus, part of the membership includes you being able to bring deals you have to consulting sessions to have us help you analyze possible ways to purchase them so that you, and other members, can learn creative deal structuring. Sign up for Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership today to access a variety of courses on deal structuring and financing strategies plus the live training and consulting.
