Thursday, April 15, 2010

Dive into this Lenders/Borrowers Discussion panel:
http://ping.fm/RUChO

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Let’s Talk about Proof BABY!!!

So, I’m back. In our last talk, we discussed the process and I briefly touched on our Proof of Funds Letter. Well, I was thinking more on this and I thought, you know, this is such a great thing, we REALLY should talk about it more.

With that in mind, I introduce to you – the proof you are going to give to your sellers, banks, or anyone who wants to know if you have MONEY!!! So, you are asking yourself, how can DoHardMoney, just randomly give me a letter without ever me speaking to them on the phone. Well, when you go on our website requesting a Proof of Funds letter (sometimes you might also have it called a pre-approval letter) it will ask you for your name, your email address, the address of the property, and then an “approximate” loan amount, we don’t ask for a specific amount as most of the time you will want to borrow or get approved for more money anyway and the seller shouldn’t even be concerned about if you are approved for more than what you are offering to them. It will then generate a letter. This information that you have supplied to us, gets stored in a database. If a seller, bank, etc. calls us to confirm that we do indeed have the funds for you as the borrower, we can easily pull up your name and confirm the information. It is as simple as that. You can utilize this tool for as many properties that you have. I think this is unique to DoHardMoney.com, so embrace it.

You see, we don’t make money, unless we can lend money. So, there is no concern that you won’t be approved for a loan; as long as you follow our criteria and if needed provide additional funds, then we can provide the loan. It is up to you whether you want to accept the loan or not.

Our Goal: To help Real Estate Investors make a profit of $26,000,000 by Dec 31, 2012

Keep an eye on it, it is moving, and I want you to be a part of it.

What is the process?

So, you know now all about pre-qualifications – THERE IS NONE. Now, let me tell you about our process. It is quite simple actually. It starts out with you going out and getting the “property under contract”. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?? Well, really all that means is where the buyer (you) and the seller have executed a purchase contract. Sometimes in order to do this you may need a proof of funds, well the beauty of our program is we can provide that for you. All you need to do is go under our Residential Loan Fees and we have a link that will take you to a Proof of Funds letter. This is a great letter. It will provide you the proof you need to show either a seller, a bank, or whomever you are trying to purchase the property from that you do indeed have the funds available to purchase the property. But I digress.

Now the process. You now have the property under contract, you are then going to go to our website (By the way, we are updating it and you are going to LOVE the changes that you will be seeing in about a month) and click on the Apply For Loan tab. Here is where the MAGIC begins. You will begin filling out the application for a loan. Now unlike a traditional bank, where you are signing away your first born (or so it feels like it) our application is only a few pages long and mostly we are just trying to gather information about the property. As you recall in our last message, remember the loan is about the property, not about you. So, from the time you give us the application it takes 2-4 days to get the evaluations completed. The $550 evaluation fee has to be paid at the time of application. That is why you don’t submit a deal until you have a fully executed contract. We are using a nationwide independent 3rd party company to do the evaluations. They will send out two evaluators at separate times to review the property, take interior/exterior photos, make and comment about rehab work and the estimates for that work. They will then complete our internal form we require. The evaluators have to be paid for their work and that is what the $550 is for. Now before you ask, no they aren’t appraisers, we don’t use appraisers, nor do we require an appraisal. This isn’t a traditional loan. Nor can we use previous evaluations that you may have had done. During the time these evaluations are being done we need you to get us all the required information to complete the loan. Once we have the evaluations back we can close 48 hours after that. Typically the hold up is with the title company (you choose) waiting for the title report to be completed, closing protection letter or wiring instructions and the hazard insurance agent. In some cases we are also held up waiting for the borrower to get the require documents in to complete the loan. We only have control over 1. The evaluations. They take between 2-4 Days 2. Approval and Docs. We can get that done in 48 hours. Everything else is up to you as the borrower, the title company and hazard insurance agent. We can move very, very fast.

That is the basic process. Happy Investing!!

What the Customer Wants to Know

We are constantly updating our website. We go back and forth with our developers, arguing about what would be best for you to not only keep you interested but mostly to EDUCATE you. What better way to have you use hard money then to have you understand what it is we do exactly. So, here we go. Here are some of the common questions that I receive daily. This information is on our website, (Now you are probably thinking why would we repeat this information if it is already on their website??) however, I think perhaps, it just needs a better explanation or maybe just a different viewpoint.


One of the questions that I receive A LOT is what are our pre-qualifications for our loans. Well, you see, here is the great thing about DoHardMoney (because not all Hard Money Lenders do this). We are not a BANK. We aren’t CONVENTIONAL (**gasp**). We are not going to take the average 30-60 days to get you your loan. We get all of our money from Private Lenders. In fact, if you have your property under contract, and you can get all of you paperwork in check for us, we can get your loan turned around in 48 hours. So what do you have to do to get the loan?? Here it is:


1. We lend based primarily on the property, not YOU.

2. You have to have the property under contract. We can’t speak to you until you have that first.

3. Make sure it is in the States that we Serve. We list them all out on our website with the Counties underneath. We make no exceptions on this.

4. Make sure it is within our pricing, between $50,000 and $250,000. No exceptions.

5. No outstanding judgments, or bankruptcies within a year.

That’s about it. We have specific types of properties we won’t lend on, but basically what we DO lend on are Single Family Non-occupied Homes, Condos, Twin Homes, Town Homes and Lofts.

Again, we loan based on the property not you. So, we don’t need your taxes, we don’t need your proof of income, etc. Take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Celebrate!

Even the elusive Dale Begg-Smith from Australia celebrated when he crossed the finish line. This guy has no emotion and does not like the press at all. In fact on the medal podium it looks like he can’t wait to get out of the spot light. But the second he came across the finish line he looked like a kid in a candy shop. He Celebrated in his own way. When you finish your rehab and retail, celebrate. Now don’t get ahead of yourself, let’s define finish. Finish is when you have the check in your hand and your hard money lender has been paid back. That is the time to celebrate. Don’t make the mistake of spending the money just because you have the property under contract. Problems happen, in real estate nothing is a sure thing. Lenders go out of business, people don’t fund, buyers lose jobs, inspectors don’t like the house, the list goes on and on.


So once your Hard Money lender is paid off and your check is in hand it is time to celebrate. I like to set a goal when I originally purchase the property. Nothing crazy just something to represent the hard work, for example taking my wife to a really fancy restaurant, getting a new chair for the house or something small, but something you would not normally do. Don’t overdue it, be conservative. But do something fun and Celebrate. By the way, if by some slim chance Dale Begg-Smith sees this post, for the record, the world saw you smile when you crossed the finish line and congrats on the silver medal. I hope you took some time to celebrate!