Tennessee is a great place to invest in real estate because of its landscape, but also cultural and musical havens like Nashville. Tennessee is home to 11 Fortune 500 Companies, most namely Dollar General, and has thriving industries in music, healthcare, and manufacturing. It is seeing massive population and job growth in cities like Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. It also has lower commute times and is very affordable with a low cost of living. With lots of great education systems through universities like Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee is a great place to invest in real estate. Around Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis, there are also many great suburbs to invest in real estate.
There are rising home values across the state, but Tennessee is also a great place to retire. It is tax-friendly, much like the rest of the South. Many foreign manufacturing automotive firms, like Nissan and Volkswagen, have migrated to Tennessee. There are many great rental markets in the state, like Nashville and Knoxville, as well as a healthcare system that is a massive employer in the state.
Right now, much of Tennessee is a seller’s market. It is a place where demand is outpacing supply, and where real estate investors are getting into bidding wars over the best real estate in the state. It is a housing bubble where homes are selling fast and for higher than listing price.
Hard money loans could be the best way to invest in real estate in Tennessee. Hard money loans are also known as short-term bridge loans and last-resort loans, but their biggest advantage in a seller’s market like Tennessee is their very fast speed of approval. Hard money loans have a very distinct advantage — they can be approved in a couple of days, whereas traditional mortgage loans can be approved in a month or more. This gives an incredible advantage borrowers, as it’s a fast form of financing that can help investors put down bids faster.
The reason hard money loans can be approved so quickly is because they’re based on the property, not the credit score of the borrower. Hard money loans rely on credit to lower interest rates, but they also have a minimum credit score of 600 to 620. Hard money loans use the property as collateral as well. The default process is different between mortgages and hard money loans. If a borrower defaults on a hard money loan, the lender becomes the homeowner in a very quick process. Every hard money lender prepares themselves for this process in case the worst happens.
For these reasons, hard money loans have lots of cons and disadvantages. They have much more unforgiving rates and terms than traditional mortgage loans. 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%, which is significantly higher than the interest rates of just over 4% of mortgages. They have repayment periods of more or less a year, which are significantly shorter than the repayment periods of traditional mortgage loans (30 years). Lastly, hard money loans have much lower LTV ratios than traditional mortgage loans, which means borrowers need to put down bigger down payments.
It’s important to only trust the best hard money lenders, which is why we at Hard Money Lenders IO have you covered. Here are the best lenders in Tennessee.