First, interest rates are generally higher on a hard money loan. You should not be surprised to pay more than 10% APR or anything in the high teens percentage wise, and you can easily pay several times that. A hard money loan should be used to help with a temporary need, like flipping a property, not as something you’ll keep around forever like your student loans. You may not even have the choice to keep a hard money loan going for long. Most loans require you to repay in full within one to five years, so you have to plan ahead. In addition to higher interest rates, you’ll often pay more points to get a hard money lenders Arizona. Five points or more would be reasonable, but you’d need a good reason to pay that much on other loans. Again, a hard money loan is a shorter-term loan, so you’ll amortize those points over a shorter period of time. They drive up your borrowing costs and like your cholesterol that’s not a healthy thing to raise.

Keep all this in mind when you walk into the office of a hard money lender. You want to diligently understand your own position as well as the position of the person sitting across from you.