Hard Money Loans

[Bryan L.]

I recently listened to a podcast on BP about hard money loans. I'm an experienced investor (about 10 years) looking to do more deals this year and next. I currently have enough lines of credit to do 2 or 3 deals at a time. I hire out all of the work, so I can manage more rehabs at once if I could get hard money and/or partners. I've searched the hard money section of BP and done google searches till I'm blue in the face, but it seems that I always come up with some issue like these:

1. They won't lend in TN (Tennessee).
2. They won't lend in "rural" areas. (I hate this one. I flip houses in small towns, but I know enough to know not to get way out in the boondocks.)
3. They will only do loan amounts of $100,000 or more. (bread-and-butter houses where I flip RETAIL for less than that).
4. I come up with a Google search result that isn't really a hard-money lender, but some other kind of web-site that supposedly gives a listing of hard-money lenders, but all of them fall into the 3 categories above.

My market is picking up and I'm ready to expand my business. I have perfect credit (never missed a payment in my life with a score in the mid 700s), I can put skin in the game, and I have another source of income to fall back on. This frustrates the hell out of me. The only thing holding me back from getting more money from regular banks is a high debt-to-income ratio (I own a lot of rentals as well).

If anyone could tell me of a real honest-to-God hard-money lender for small dollar amounts in small town TN, I would appreciate it.