I own a few houses and historically have done all of my own real estate investing, but with my travel schedule for 2026, I don’t have the time I normally would to manage new personal investments, so I’m considering getting in on a hard money lending deal.
Specifically, I’m wondering where to find Hard Money Deals, how to vet them properly to minimize risk, and hoping to hear some personal stories on both good / bad experiences with hard money lending.
$10,000 is on the low side of what I can contribute and I wager it’s not very much in the grand scheme, but I’ve heard some hard money lenders pool multiple investors into the deal? How does that work exactly and is the payoff worth it? I’ve heard some deals go as high as 16%.
TIA
Strategies for hard money lending deals?
byu/alekseyweyman inrealestateinvesting
Posted by alekseyweyman
6 Comments
It’ll be hard to find anyone reputable that’ll $10k. I’ve worked for a few and the minimum was $100k. These were all in NYC metro area so other regions may be less but $10k seems incredibly low.
Lending money, even through a pool, isn’t really a quick solution. You need to do a ton of diligence on what lender you’ll be working with and what types of deals you’d want to lend in. I’d recommend doing some local networking to find someone reputable that you like and trust.
There’s a lot of capital in the space now including a ton of institutional capital so returns have been compressed the last 5 years or so. I would expect 9-10%. If you wanted to invest in some very risky deals that smart money won’t invest in, you may be able to get closer to 16%.
You’re wanting to invest the minimum and gain the most from basically doing nothing. To make those returns you need some real skin in the game
Might be better off with a syndication, it helps to be an accredited investor
$10,000 isn’t really an amount enough to get in to hard money lending. Usually the minimum loan amounts for these sorts of things is like $50,000 or $75,000, and lenders also have to be licensed. There’s also title work and contract work that goes in to hard money lending. There are some places where loan funding is pooled like Crowd Trust Deed, RFG or Zeus Crowd Funding but even these also require minimums.
Look up Micro Lending. This is more of what you may be looking for.
Research different hard, money lending firms for their investor options. As an example:
https://www.blackburneandsons.com
Tips: don’t invest in business opportunities with real estate, such as a restaurant. Don’t invest in cash out refinance deals (ie borrower needs a new loan to avoid default on existing loan), a purchase with 30-35% buyer down payment is much more secure.