How Are Hard Money Lenders Finding Investors These Days?

[Kyle O'Brien]

I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately around investor outreach and thought this could be a helpful discussion for both lenders and investors in the space. For those of you actively flipping, BRRRRing, or working on small multifamily deals — how are you typically connecting with lenders you trust?

Do you reach out once a deal is under contract? Build relationships ahead of time? Go through brokers? Referrals?

And from the lending side — I’m curious what’s been working best lately for finding and connecting with serious investors. Are you doing direct outreach, social, local meetups, or relying on word-of-mouth? Personally, I support a lender that works nationwide and funds flips, rentals, new construction, and multifamily — and I’ve been exploring different ways to connect with the right operators who need capital and can actually close.

Would love to hear what’s working (or not working) for others — both lenders and investors.

[Don Konipol]

Quote from @Kyle O'Brien:

I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately around investor outreach and thought this could be a helpful discussion for both lenders and investors in the space. For those of you actively flipping, BRRRRing, or working on small multifamily deals — how are you typically connecting with lenders you trust?

Do you reach out once a deal is under contract? Build relationships ahead of time? Go through brokers? Referrals?

And from the lending side — I’m curious what’s been working best lately for finding and connecting with serious investors. Are you doing direct outreach, social, local meetups, or relying on word-of-mouth? Personally, I support a lender that works nationwide and funds flips, rentals, new construction, and multifamily — and I’ve been exploring different ways to connect with the right operators who need capital and can actually close.

Would love to hear what’s working (or not working) for others — both lenders and investors.

We are in the commercial space as private/hard money lenders for loans between $500k and $6 million.

90% of the loans we do, and 98% of our deal flow is through mortgage brokers, loan brokers and other intermediaries.  Probably because almost no one wakes up one morning believing borrowing capital is going to cost them 13% interest and 5 points.  So they go to their bank and are turned down. Then they contact one or more mortgage brokers, who over a period of 3 + months fail to identify a lender that will assume the risk of a mortgage where the borrower or property fail to meet certain criteria.  At that point the mortgage broker identifies the loan as one that can only be financed with high interest rate capital. 

One question is why most mortgage brokers don’t recognize that a loan won’t meet institutional financing requirements upfront.  The answer is that the financial intermediaries do not require full disclosure, including PROVABLE financial information BEFORE they “shop” the loan. So, a lot of the negative information doesn’t come out until “late” in the game. 

I have about 15,000 mortgage broker contacts.  10 bring us the majority of our deals, and 50 are at least somewhat active with us.  Linked In has been my tool of choice.