Mount Vernon is a suburb in the New York City area, in Westchester County. It is considered an inner suburb of the city, just north of the Bronx. It has a population of approximately 74,000 people, and is the eighth biggest city in the state. Mount Vernon is named after Mount Vernon, Virginia, and today, it is a great suburb to live in that is very accessible to the New York City area.
According to Niche, Mount Vernon gives residents an urban feel, and is a place where most people rent their homes. There is great nightlife and diversity in Mount Vernon, and the city is home to many young families and young professionals. It has a median home value of $362,200 and a median rent of $1,363.
Right now, Mount Vernon is a buyer’s market. Supply is outpacing demand in Mount Vernon, and prices tend to be lower and homes may stay on the housing market a bit longer.
Hard money loans might be the best way to invest in real estate in Mount Vernon. Hard money loans are otherwise known as short-term bridge loans and last resort loans, but they’re mostly used for real estate transactions. Normally, in a seller’s market, the biggest advantage of hard money loans is they can be approved very quickly. They can be approved in a couple of days, whereas traditional mortgage loans can be approved in more or less a month.
However, in a buyer’s market like Mount Vernon, hard money loans have other advantages. Since Mount Vernon is such a robust rental market, hard money loans help real estate investors qualify for cash-only properties. In real estate, cash-only means you can only use cash to pay for the property — but it also means a property is in such poor condition it doesn’t qualify for traditional financing at all.
Hard money loans sometimes qualify as “cash” because they’re not traditional financing, and hard money loans are also designed for helping properties in disrepair. Hard money loans are primarily used for real estate transactions like fix and flips and construction projects, and real estate investors can make properties stand out from the rest in a rental market by repairing them and flipping them to make them more attractive.
Since hard money lenders use the property as collateral and asset, they use the property to determine the rates and terms of the loan. If a borrower defaults on a hard money loan, the lender owns the property, but if a borrower defaults on a mortgage, it’s a significantly more complicated process — the bank initiates costly and lengthy foreclosure proceedings.
This means there are a lot of risks to hard money loans, and this is reflected in their rates and terms. Hard money loans have higher interest rates, shorter repayment periods, and lower LTV ratios than traditional mortgage loans. They have interest rates of 8–15%, repayment periods of more or less a year, and LTV ratios of 65–75%, which are all a lot less forgiving than traditional mortgage loans.
It’s essential to only trust the most reliable lenders with hard money loans. Not every hard money lender is trustworthy, and new investors in particular have to be careful. Not every lender gives to new investors since they don’t have a successful track record of fix and flips. New investors often have to rely on a strong financial standing to make themselves more appealing to lenders and gain lower interest rates.
At Hard Money Lenders IO, we have you covered — we have made a list of the best hard money lenders in Mount Vernon so you don’t have to.
