Borrowing Downpayment, closing costs, and earnest money

[Darrin Carey]

As a private lender, I'm suddenly getting a lot of requests for three things that concern me.

1. Lending the Downpayment (behind another hard money lender)
2. Lending all the borrowers closing costs
3. Lending funds for putting up earnest money

Personally, I think putting up money for those items as a lender is EXTREMELY HIGH RISK. Out of 500+ loans I've done, only a very few have had problems.
Every one that had a problem had one common feature, the borrower had little to none of their own money in the deal. (Early ones, I didn't know better. The couple recent ones, the borrowers lied about it, and I found out later. Those borrowers made the forever banned list. Not because the deal went bad, but because they lied about the source of funds, and ghosted everyone went the rehab got hard)

Is there someone out there teaching this as a strategy to borrowers and potential lenders? 
Are people really making these loans? AND getting paid back?
Am I missing something here?

Darrin Carey

[Theresa Harris]

I think it is a combination of social media, broke people wanting to get rich quick, and people thinking real estate investing is easy money.