Learn about the experience requirements and the project scope restrictions for Rehab Financial Group’s 100% Financing Program for residential property fix and flip projects in 30+ states. Lender Link’s CEO, Rocky Butani visited the company’s office in January 2023 to interview RFG’s President, John Santilli. Watch the video or read the transcript below.
ROCKY BUTANI:
What types of projects do you fund? Can I do a major rehab project that has adding square footage or adding an ADU, or do you have restrictions on the scope of the project?
JOHN SANTILLI:
Great question. We do not have restrictions on the scope of the project. The fact is that we look at light rehab, heavy rehab, we permit all of those. We permit conversions as long as permits are in place, square footage added, whatever it takes to get the project done. We don’t have any LTC restrictions, no heavy or light rehab restrictions on any of our loans.
ROCKY BUTANI:
But what if I’m a new investor and I don’t have experience? Do I have to stick to doing a light or cosmetic rehab project?
JOHN SANTILLI:
For a long time, we had no restrictions on whether you had zero experience or major experience on how Much rehab you could do. The fact is that it is a function of the entire qualification process, but we also heavily encourage brand new investors that have zero experience to start out with a small project. So it was heavily encouraged in the past. Now we’ve put a $50,000 budget as kind of a benchmark. If you’re going to be a brand new investor coming into the marketplace and your budget is greater than $50,000, you’re going to have to have good income, good assets overall in order to be approved for that project.
ROCKY BUTANI:
Speaking of experience, there’s a lot of lenders out there in the market that won’t consider a new
real estate investor that has never done a rehab project, but it sounds like Rehab Financial Group does lend to new real estate investors?
JOHN SANTILLI:
Having zero experience is really a niche for Rehab Financial. We encourage people to jump into this business. I mean, how do you get experience if you have no experience? Our website has been designed to really be an educational resource for brand new investors. So if you watch HGTV over the weekend and you get the bug and you want to go into investing, yes, we have no restrictions on a new investor coming on board and starting today.
ROCKY BUTANI:
There’s a few companies out there that I know of that offer 100% financing, or they say they do, and they’ll take an investor with no experience, but they require the investor to go through their training program, which costs thousands of dollars. Do you just offer the educational stuff to the investors at no cost, or is there a fee for that?
JOHN SANTILLI:
There’s no cost to any of our educational resources for the investor. For rehab financial, the way that we approach every loan is with your success in mind and our success. Ultimately, we don’t get paid unless you’re successful. So on the front end, we’re going to spend some time to make sure that all the numbers work. We educate you the best way we possibly can, and we help you through the entire process.
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