Posted by John Merchant on March 10, 2006 at 23:06:11:
You’re exactly right in wanting & needing to check him out BEFORE investing with him or making him a loan.
Have a lawyer run a credit check on him as he, representing you in a potential financial deal with the guy, has every legal right to do.
And if your potential borrower or partner won’t coopoerate by giving you his SS #, etc., I’d tell him to forget the deal.
I recently was approached on an investment but when I demanded the buyers’ SS #s to check them out, they gave me a couple of phony, non-existent SS #s…so I told them to forget the deal.
Better to be a little cautious and KNOW rather than guessing.
I just read the How-To article on Equity Sharing by JP Vaughan and a light came on in my mind. I was invited by a person on one of the message boards on creonline, to participate in what I believe is an Equity Sharing partnership, about a week ago. The investor explained it to me in great detail. It sounded great to me but I am not an extremely experienced investor. I just have a handful of rentals and I am wanting to learn more about investing. It sounded exactly like the article, but he would handle the occupiers, management and everything else, as all the properties were in other states. To be able to proceed in the partnership he wanted me to send him a standard loan application, to do a credit check. I was told by a friend of mine to do a credit check on him too. How do I do that? I don’t have an attorney or anything like that. Basically what I am trying to determine is; are there things that I need to do or to know that will help me cover myself, if things don’t work out or are not exactly on the “up and up”. I have no reason to believe things are not as he says, but I don’t exactly know him either. He was very knowledgeable about the subject, so I don’t think he was just someone off the street trying to hoodwink someone.
I just found a fairly new real estate club here in my city that I plan to join. I contacted the moderator and asked him to call the guy and see if he could get some info and explain it to me better. He left a message with the guy but has not heard back from him yet. I didn’t want to press the moderator of the local club to do any more than what he would volunteer for. I haven’t even met him yet and the first meeting that I will be able to attend here is not until the end of this month.