An important thing to remember is that these strategies are on a spectrum.

By the way, he's still actively lending in that area; he has no competition doing $50k loans in rural areas.I'm curious - for those who are saying hard money is insanely expensive, on which end of the spectrum do you fall under? 

I wouldn't call it gray just because that indicates a spectrum between legal and illegal.

I on the opposite end of the spectrum, want to bring in investors or cash and bring up the properties value.

@Freddy Morgan I haven't heard of this but smaller banks are usually on one end of the spectrum (more lenient or way less lenient).

Largely similar on the sale side as the institutional capital pushes out on the risk spectrum because core pricing is so crazy causing the opportunistic value-add players to push farther out as well, and so on down the line. 

It ranges across the spectrum depending upon the source.

That's where HM usually falls on the spectrum.

(And here:)https://www.biggerpockets.com/...Now, just because a market has cheap properties does NOT qualify it as a good rental market.There are a lot of larger markets (let’s say 600K population size or greater) that have a ton of cheap houses for sale.What I’ve noticed is that most of the time, the majority of those cheap properties are in D class neighborhoods.I have a theory on why this is, but I can’t prove it.My gut tells me that a larger town will have a broader spectrum of socioeconomic classes.

Crowdfunding is an interesting concept and does allow a broad spectrum of investors.