@Stephan Haas Hi Stephan, I am currently working with them on a transaction. We haven't closed yet. I am using them just for just the acquisition. Anh questions I can answer?

@Caleb Charles have you closed your transaction with Cogo Capital?  I am currently in the process of finding a hard money lender and would like to know details of your experience with Cogo.

Thank you.

@Stephan Haas    

@ljeoma 

I have not used COGO before, I have talked to them about a couple deals and I know a couple of their brokers. Here are a couple things I noticed:

1. Their terms seem pretty high

2. They are wanting to be in a very strong position like only loaning purchase or very short term loans.

3. Their "brokers" have to pay 25k or 40k just to be able to be part of the "team". It seems as though it is really just a way to drive in brokers and make them pay upfront fees to promote their COGO money.

I am not saying don't use them or try them, but I am a little stand offish of them. 

AC

@Andrew Cordle thank you for your response.  I appreciate all of the information you provided.  Do you have a company that you use or could recommend for hard money loans?

Thank you.

if anyone is looking for hard money loans I can help, I have quite a few different programs from 'soft money, stated income' up to hard money asset based loans.  Let me know if I can help, btw, I have used COGO in the past.

If ANY lender requires a broker to pay fees to sell their products, they absolutely are not in the prudent lending business, they are structured fee based marketing types more than a professional brokerage. I'd suggest you stay away from any operation that sells loan programs to originators rather than directly serving the public or their target market borrower. It smells, my BS Meter is going off, red rockets are going off with red flags waving! :)  

@Peter Abraham

  Peter I have a few short term mezz loans out myself were the borrower was mentioning me getting taken out by COGO... are they for real... I was curious... these are in MS.

I hope he is not dealing with a lender that can't perform.. his late payments and default rate will bring a tear to his eye if he can't get it done  :)

I've personally borrowed from COGO for a flip I did in Chicago.  I thought the terms they extended were fair and they did what they said they were going to do. 

However, they made me collect contractor bids when I told them from the very beginning I (my employed staff) was going to do the work.  I thought this was odd and a bit unethical since I had no intention of using the bidder for the work.  I attempted to finance a second, bigger project with them, but they wanted bids from contractors for everything.  I used a different lender for that deal.  

I will contact them again for future projects, but if they make me jump the same hoops I'm not sure what I will do.   In the end, as a lender, they are solid.  PM me for my contact.

Spoke to them about potential money for buy & flip.  Without knowing my credit score (they said their money is not credit score driven...) they quoted me 18%, that's HIGH by anyone's standards!  But first I must pay for an appraisal and submit that with the application. Not sure if they always operated on a draw basis, but they do now (I totally understand why).  I won't be using their money...

I recently contacted them and they spent a lot of time trying to sell me on their mentoring program that costs an arm and leg. They seem like the gurus that want to coach you for a fortune. I think the CEO is Lee Arnold. Has anyone gone through that program or other related programs? How have your dealings been with them? I definitely don't like the idea of putting $10k up front for a program that is not guaranteed to work. Your thoughts and advice please. Thanks!

This is an old post, but my experience with COGO was so bad, I need to chime in and say it was terrible! They were slow, cumbersome, and impolite. I almost lost a deal and had to change lenders days prior to my deadline. I went through one of their "brokers" who I trusted, but she was shocked how bad they treated this deal.