On one end, you have sponsors who attract institutional capital, family offices, private equity, or high–net-worth investors where the LP's often negotiate stronger terms and maintain greater control. 

Acquisition Fee: biggest driver I see (and apparently all institutions too) is level of acquisition fee.  2% or less is ideal. 

I use to save up for rental down payments using my high yield savings account, then I discovered the Rockefeller Method, using optimally structured & funded whole life insurance as leverage to build cash flowing assets.Teaching this method has become my passion; happy to share my lessons learned!

Maybe you're:Creating custom valuation models or ARV calculatorsIdentifying Market Trends that others don't know aboutAutomating workflowsDeveloping property data aggregation systemsWorking with APIs (Public Data, Rentometer, Zestimate, BatchLeads, etc)Would love to connect and compare notes on implementation strategies, best practices for real estate-specific prompts, and creative use cases you've discovered in your local market.

Institutional private money is really no different than Hard Money except maybe they can close a little faster but sometimes it is a title issue and you can't anyway.  

Institutional or registered lenders are often exempt from usury laws, individual, unregistered, private lenders are usually not exempt, check your state usury laws.Paying any fee to obtain a loan is considered points, points are pre-paid interest, points are paid to institutional or registered lenders, not individuals. 

Great points, Jeff — and you’re right to highlight that the expense ratios are unusually efficient for a coastal STR.A couple of clarifications on the numbers:The current owner self-manages, which keeps cleaning and maintenance costs lower than a third-party STR manager would typically charge.Some of the repairs and CapEx were front-loaded in prior years (new flooring, appliances, and paint), so last year’s P&L reflects more of a stabilized-operations scenario.The utilities figure is accurate — it’s higher due to being master-metered for the property — but the other OPEX categories are slightly understated if you were to underwrite this as a fully managed, third-party operation.If I modeled it using a professional management assumption plus normalized reserves, the operating ratio trends closer to 48–50%, which aligns with what you mentioned for coastal STR multifamily.I appreciate you calling that out — it’s a great reminder of how much variance there can be between owner-operated and institutional-style expense reporting, especially in hybrid STR assets like this.Here's the owner's profit and loss statement for the exacts of the 2024 year.

We got hit with a lot of fraud 1-2 years back and instituted ID check.

It’s amazing to see how far you’ve come since discovering Rich Dad Poor Dad and diving into BiggerPockets.

I’m here to learn, share what I discover, and be an active part of the BiggerPockets community.Looking forward to learning, growing, and contributing to this amazing community.Marie Gomez