If you’re looking to do some serious real estate investing, you might be interested in using a hard money lender. While most homeowners go with conventional financing, a hard money lender can be more useful for buying and selling properties.

For those that haven’t been a real estate investor before, hard money lending may be confusing. Why is a hard money lender useful? And how do you identify good lenders?

Even if you’ve used a hard money lender before, how do you know you’re getting the most out of your hard money lender? Can they provide insight into today’s housing market

We’ll dive into hard money lending with Romney Navarro, CEO of Streamline Funding which is a Texas-based private lending company.

• The hard money lending process and the difference between that and conventional financing

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If you want to work with a hard money lender, you need to be prepared to be vetted. Hard money lenders will evaluate you on 5 Cs—character, capacity, capital, collateral and conditions. Using a hard money lender is sometimes a better option than conventional financing when you’re doing an investment property because of the requirements needed to get approved.

“Collateral is the very first thing that we place weight on. It's either a good deal or a bad deal just on its face, real estate only. Second thing that we're looking at is credentials.

Have they done this? Do they have a proven track record? And then cash. Do they have enough money to float this thing? So we're looking at those things. You know, notice, I didn't even talk about credit. Didn't even talk about character. I don't care what a credit score is.

I don't care what the background is. Those are so minimal. They don’t move the needle that much. Collateral moves the needle a lot, experience or credentials moves the needle a lot, and cash.”

Romney says that if you’re a first time investor or new builder, you need to find a partner. Credentials are hard to gauge when a hard money lender is working with a first time investor or builder. That’s why having a partner