The oldest are now 39, married with kids - once said they would prefer to rent, uber instead of buy a car and work from a coffeeshop, now they are starting families and that changes everything.

From what I'm seeing I'll have to put down 25% down payment (this is normal for rental real estate apparently)  on a 315,000 dollar house that's about 80k so the initial loan is about 240k    lets say i get the value of the property to re-appraise for 375,000 and i take out a 70% refinance loan that is about 260k  that nets me 40-50k cash, but i could foresee cash on cash return of +250-400 dollars from income.  

Like @Nathan G. said, if you had no garages and they brought home a new car and said where is the garage, would you build one?

The question I have is there are four camper trailers, two utility box trailers, an old tour bus, a couple of homemade trailer‘s, an old boat, two sheds, a play ground, four cars, and about 20 to 30 large white rabbits as well as a house full of junk.

I normally brought any property that needed to be shortsaled or foreclosed to my broker and list it .

The history here is that when I bought the 3-family property 2 years ago in Chelsea, MA, the condo association for the property next door forced the previous owner of my property to move her fence about a foot so that they could park an extra car on their end. 

I'm in good shape on retirement and have newer cars.

Good evening, I'm just starting my real estate investing and was wondering what are the steps for a hard money loan, my credit isn't great to get a normal loan.

Some do, some don't, no absolute norm.  

Actions I thought were smart turned out not to be.Just make sure you do most stuff correct than wrong and you'll be fine :)Great point @Cody L.I the market is doing very great now so it's normal to look back and think the same but I'm sure your money are been put to use on other $$$ generating investments so I won't see that as a mistake.Thanks for sharing.