Funded Deals: An Alternative Method to Finding Lenders

Finding private lenders is quite easy these days, but choosing the right lender for your needs is always the challenging part. In this guide, I’ll tell you about an alternative method and resource you can use when searching for private financing for investment real estate deals, which is also known as hard money or bridge lending.

There are lots of resources where you can find private lenders’ guidelines and programs, including Private Lender Link. In most cases, this could provide enough information you need to choose a lender you want to do business with. The alternative method is to find lenders by learning about deals that have been funded. This will inform you of which lenders have actually funded deals in your state or metro area, or which lenders have funded a deal similar to yours. Many lenders do provide a list of deals they’ve funded, which you can find on their websites or social media.

The problem is most lenders don’t provide any useful information about their deals. Many lenders publish what’s known in our industry as “tombstones.” It’s a photo of the property with the loan amount and maybe the location. Sometimes lenders don’t even show a real photo of the property, so there is no credibility there, and no useful information to make you want to contact the lender. When lenders publish their funded deals, they are obviously promoting themselves, but I believe it’s more effective if lenders focus on educating the public about the deal terms and structure, rather than just bragging about the amount of capital they deployed.

Funded Deals on Private Lender Link

At Private Lender Link, we’ve made a big effort to create a valuable resource were you can learn about deals funded by private lending companies, which includes the useful information that you actually care about. Most important is the leverage. For a purchase deal, how much did the borrower contribute, and how much did the lender fund? For a refinance, what was the loan-to-value? If lenders don’t provide this information, we don’t accept their deal posting.

Everyone wants to know the pricing. What was the interest rate, and how many points were charged? Most of the lenders posting funded deals on our platform are proving the pricing while a small percentage choose to keep this private. And we require lenders to provide an approximate funding date. So if you see an interest rate that looks quite low for the current market, take a look at when it was funded.

There’s lots of other useful information that lenders provide on our platform, including the story behind the deal, the loan term, how long did it take to close, details about the subject property. Was a broker involved, and how much did the broker earn? What’s the exit strategy? All of this information is helpful when you’re searching for a lender, and it educates you about how private lending deals are structured.

Examples of Funded Deal Searches

1. Want to know which lenders have funded a loan in your state? Use the State filter.
2. Are you seeking a ground-up construction loan? Use the Loan Type filter.
3. Are you seeking funding for a hotel or other specialty commercial property type? Use the Property Type filter.
4. Want to know which lenders have the lowest rates? Use the Interest Rate slider in the Advanced Filters section.

Once you’ve found some lenders that may be a fit for your deal, review their profiles to learn about their requirements and contact them directly. If you’d like us to review your deal and make recommendations, click the CREATE A LOAN REQUEST button. Provide some information about the deal for us to review, and we’ll invite a few select lenders to look at it.

In addition to finding lenders, the funded deals on our platform can be a great resource for you to stay informed about private lending trends. We post deals on our social media almost every day, and the posts include the detailed summaries so you can quickly learn about each deal without having to visit our site. And we send out an email once a month to feature multiple deals. Visit PrivateLenderLink.com and look for the newsletter sign-up form at the bottom of the home page.