Residential Hard Money Loan

A residential hard money loan is a variety of loan the place where a customer will get funds in line with the price of a unique commercial or residential real estate investment. The term hard money refers to the difficulties in obtaining any loan. Hard money loans provide high rates of interest minimizing loan-to-value ratios, while there is no federal government institution which backside the loan originator. The loans are given from the importance of real estate property guarantee.

Residential hard money loan are generally loans offered by private loan providers on the basis of the need for the particular property or even home rather than the conventional bank requirements of credit ratings ., taxation statements, and earnings claims with the customer. Residential hard-money loans are usually non permanent bridge loans that happen to be ship to expenditures, replacing, home foreclosures and those that declare themselves bankrupt. The interest rates for these loans are generally higher, but it's cheaper than dealing with a financial companion or declaring for bankruptcy.

Generally, hard money loans offer awareness rates and also factors that happen to be 50-100% greater than conventional bank loans. It has led to the sense that they are difficult to pay off. However, hard money loans are viewed as to be beneficial for individuals searching for resources to help them acquire loans, one example is, for you to renovate house just before promoting as well as leasing this.

The actual hard money lenders usually take into account income-producing properties for example rentals, store or shopping malls, commercial, offices, motels, motels, medical corporations, and restaurants. They also provide loans for non-income creating activities such as terrain order, advancement and construction, bank workouts, foreclosures and also bankruptcies.

Nearly all eco-friendly locate a safe and secure expense with a return that is much better than what they will get from the standard bank. Since residential hard money loan are usually collateralize using a home with usually 30% - 50% collateral, the investor is actually well protected along with gets the benefit of the more expensive interest rate come back.

earnmoneyfromblog1

earnmoneyfromblog1

Recommended Reading

In the comments to my last post, Jason asked me what books I would recommend. I'm assuming he was referring to real estate investing books. That's actually a fairly tough question. I've been investing in real estate for 8 years now. I started out by reading a bunch of books, but looking back, I realize I've gained the majority of my knowledge from experience and from reading other people's experiences via blogs and forums on the internet.

But if I had to pick a couple books for a real estate investor newbie, I would pick these two:

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. This was the book that launched his empire and really, the only one of the series that is worth reading now. (The rest of the Rich Dad books start repeating the same stuff over and over) There are questions about how true his story is and if "Rich Dad" was one person or an amalgamation of multiple people, but that doesn't really matter. There are two things to take away from this book: the difference between passive and earned income and the idea of having your money work for you. (And those two are really the same thing, when you get right down to it.) The book is almost completely bereft of practical, step-by-step instructions for investing in real estate and that frustrates some people. But I look at this book as more of an inspirational book than an instruction manual. Nowadays, Kiyosaki has moved on and his preaching has changed quite a bit from when I followed him 7 to 8 years ago. Back then (and this was way back when he would give presentations wearing Hawaiian shirts instead of suits), his persona was that of a rich guy trying to help the poor masses think like and get rich like millionaires. The last time I looked at what he was doing, I got the sense he was just another massively wealthy guy trying to convince his followers the standard Republican Party line of lower taxes is always better.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I wrote about this book previously and there is a chapter or two specifically about how to increase the price you get for selling a property by carefully wording your listing. The thing to take from this book is that people don't behave rationally and there are all sorts of cause and effect relationships between events that you might not expect.

You'll notice both those books were originally published several years ago. I've stopped reading real estate books, for the most part. I read a bunch in the past and came to the conclusion that books about real estate investing, almost by definition, have to be somewhat generic. You won't find a book with step-by-step guides on how to do it. This is mainly because real estate laws and procedures are different in each state. If you are interested in buying properties at foreclosure auctions, for example, the methods vary wildly from state to state. The standard real estate contract varies by state and you need to become familiar with what is in the contract used in your state (or state where you investment property is located).

This isn't to say I think my real estate education is complete. I simply find I get more value from following blogs and discussion forums on the internet than I do from books. I list the blogs I follow in the sidebar. I'd start there. See if you can find some blogs written by people in your state or area and follow them for a while. Learn from their mistakes. Ask questions. The reason people blog is because they want to share their knowledge and experiences. They are usually happy to answer questions (within reason, of course).

The corollary to the above, of course, is you have to be careful whose advice you take. Like all things on the internet, you have no idea of the person's true knowledge or experience level. You don't want to end up following a Casey Serin. So be a lurker for a while. I read forums and blogs for a year before I bought my first property. Keep your BS-detector finely tuned.

Of course, the quickest way to get an education in real estate investing is to buy some real estate. That's the quickest, but not necessarily the cheapest :-)

Rents On The Rise Nationwide

This article from Reuters says apartment rents are now the highest they have been since 2007 and vacancies are at a 10 year low. This seems to be consistent with what we are seeing at the Houston apartment complex.

New California Foreclosure Law

Because all my hard money lending is done in California and to people who buy, rehab, and sell foreclosures, this news story caught my eye. The California legislature recently passed a law making it harder to banks to foreclose on property owners. According to Reuters, the bill prohibits banks from "dual-tracking" loans - proceeding with the foreclosure process while also in loan modification negotiations with the owners. The bill also lawsuits against robo-signing. The bill still has to be signed by the governor before it becomes law, but he is expected to sign it.

On the surface, this law sounds good to me. I will freely admit the first I heard about it was from the above linked article and the facts in that article are the extent of my knowledge of it. I do think robo-signing is a big problem. When your actiosn can result in people losing their home and being forced out onto the streets, you need to have someone carefully look over the documents before foreclosing. This just stands to reason. As to the prohibition against dual-tracking, I'm OK with that as well. Yes, it may result in longer times to foreclose on a property. But if a borrower is in talks with a bank to modify their loan, I think they would reasonably conclude that the bank would pause foreclosure proceedings while they are attempting to work out a settlement. Further, without this restriction, the bank has a huge advantage at negotiating - they would be able to drag out the talks until foreclosure was a day away, leaving the borrower with no choice but to either accept the terms the bank offered or lose his or her house.

How will this affect my lending? I expect to see a slowdown in houses for sale at auction for the 6 or so months after this bill becomes law. This will represent the time banks have to wait while they attempt to reach a loan modification deal before proceeding. There is nothing in this law, to my knowledge, that requires the banks change what loan modification terms they must accept, so they will still be reaching the same decision on modifying loans or not, resulting in about the same number of houses going to foreclosure. There will just be a delay lasting the length of those negotiations.

May Apartment Update

I received the May financials for the Houston apartment complex and I'm pleased to see the numbers continue their improvement. Last month's record income was exceeded by almost $3,000, setting another new record for the highest income since 2010. Also, as mentioned last month, we received a reimbursement from our insurance company for some electrical work that was done last month. Just as the expense depressed our monthly income last month, the refund inflated our monthly income this month. However, if we exclude that amount, the property actually showed a $1,200 profit this month! That's the first time in a long time the property has been in positive territory. Looking at the entire year so far, it's still underwater, but it's possible the property  may be emerging from the red sea.

Will this trend continue? I hope so. In what may or may not be an ominous sign, management did not give an indication of how June was shaping up.

Security At Houston Apartment Complex

Last month, I noticed that the financials for the Houston apartment complex showed the security expense had dropped from between $1,500 and $3,000 a month to zero. My concern was that management eliminated some security measures as a cost cutting move. I was worried that this might result in an increase in vandalism and crime-related expenses. I emailed management about this and, it took a while, but I finally got a response.

It turns out, management was able to cancel the private on-site security patrols they were using because they were able to install security cameras owned by the Houston Police Department at no cost. In the couple of months these have been in operation, there has not been in increase in criminal activity, so it seems to be a positive move.