Layton is a city with just under 82,000 people, located in Davis County, Utah. It’s the biggest city in Davis County and the ninth biggest city in the state, and it is a suburb of Salt Lake City that is very close to many Utah staples like Salt Lake City International Airport and Antelope Island. It is very close to the Hill Air Force Base and has multiple retail and shopping opportunities in the Layton Hills Mall, as well as other food chain. Layton is also home to the Weber State University-Davis campus, and it contributed billions of dollars in retail sales per year.
According to Niche, Layton is one of the best places to live in Utah. It is a place with a dense suburban feel and most people own their homes. Layton is a diverse city with lots of jobs, health and fitness opportunities, and outdoor activities. It is a great place to raise a family and very easy to commute through. It has above average public schools, parks, and Layton is also home to a variety of young families and young professionals. It has a median home value of $285,100 and $1084.
Right now, Layton is a seller’s market. It’s a city where demand is outpacing supply and where real estate investors should expect a housing bubble, where homes are selling fast and for higher than listing price. In Layton, investors are consistently getting into bidding wars over competitive housing.
Investors in Layton should look into hard money loans as a means of buying houses in this super competitive housing bubble. Hard money loans are an alternative to traditional mortgage loans that are most often used by investors trying to flip homes in disrepair for significant profit, particularly in transactions like fix and flips, long-term rentals, and construction projects. In competitive seller’s markets, mortgages aren’t always advantageous because real estate investors might lose out on properties in the month or more it takes them to be approved. Hard money loans, by contrast, can be approved in a couple of days, which is significantly faster and makes investors more competitive.
However, hard money loans also come with tremendous risks to supplement their advantages. They have expensive and unforgiving rates and terms, which is why most would advise only experienced real estate investors use hard money loans. They come with higher interest rates than mortgages, which are skyrocketing right now in an exploding housing market. Mortgages have interest rates averaging 5.6% (for 30 year terms) in the current housing market, whereas hard money loans have interest rates even higher at 8–15%. Hard money loans also have much shorter periods of more or less than a year, which means if a real estate investment does not pan out, hard money loans can be very difficult to pay off.
Hard money loans are inherently very different from mortgages because they use a different asset. Traditional mortgage loans use the credit score and financial standing of the borrower as the asset, whereas hard money loans use the property itself as the asset. This does not mean hard money loans don’t rely on credit, because most hard money loans require minimum credit scores of 600 to 620 and also use credit to lower interest rates for new investors. But hard money loans use the property as collateral — if a borrower defaults on a hard money loan, the lender becomes the homeowner and is responsible for flipping the property themselves.
For all these reasons, it’s important to be selective in only choosing reputable lenders. We have provided a list of the best hard money lenders in Layton.
