What happened to hard money?

I kind of lost touch with the real estate investing world during the Great Recession with all my spare time taken up by the need to keep my “business” afloat. Now recently I have gotten active again, have found a couple of nice deals, but have run into a wall: all the (alleged) hard money lenders I have contacted want 20% of purchase price out of my pocket in order to lend 70% of ARV. Ten years ago it was 70% of ARV regardless, and if the deal was good enough there could be cash left over for repairs.

The first deal I was working on was on the east coast, and I thought maybe it was a regional phenomenon. But now I am working local (Mountain Time Zone) and am running into the same thing.

Is it just me, or have things changed? If things have changed how do investors handle it now if they want to buy-fix and sell.

No one is answering?

I’m finding the same thing here in my area…I just need more financing as I have many deals that need it…lol…I do “creative” deals often but obviously those are not accepted by most people selling their properties…so I need more money to do what I want as well. I have been using my own financing of deals with profits from other deals but want off of this crazy merry-go-round…private investors are getting advice from their friends/family not to go with real estate investors regardless of the great ROI…I go through the lending companies you hear about online, but they want that 25% down, points, fees, etc., so much of your profits & I do agree to pay for borrowing but to a point, so private investors are better …it used to be so easy…so I’m not giving up…curious to see if anyone responds to your post.

Hard money loans have changed because the lenders have changed. It used to be a retired millionaire/ex-investor loaning his own money and making his own rules.

Now, hard money lenders are more “commercialized” and they often use a pool of other investors’ funds to lend. As such, they want a very low rate of default for their investors and thus have stricter rules.