There's more to effectively doing real estate deals than just having hard money lenders in your pocket. To get the most out of your real estate activities, there are three key tools that can help you to make better investments and better decisions.

For the inexperienced, entering the world of residential or commercial real estate investment is definitely a process fraught with risk. Not only are there bad deals but also unscrupulous dealers. For this reason, the novice real estate investor should build a strong team around them to advise on a deal and help evaluate it. Here are some tips on finding the most important team members:

Finding a traditional funding source for an unusual, but potentially lucrative, real estate deal is one of the most frustrating tasks around. Banks, credit unions and other traditional lending sources are just not interested in deals that fall outside of their “standard” parameters. Instead, savvy real estate investors turn to knowledgeable and experienced lenders who can understand a complicated investment deal, namely, private money lenders. 

With the continuing recession in the real estate market and the general malaise in the economy, it remains difficult if not impossible to finance anything other than a traditional, single family real estate transaction. In fact, if you have less than stellar credit, banks are reluctant to finance those deals unless the loan is backed by a government guarantee. While this situation is problematic enough for the individual who wishes to purchase a home for themselves, it creates far more significant problems for the real estate investor. One possible solution to this problem is the use of funds from private individuals and/or hard money lenders. 

When you are looking to buy the most lucrative types of properties in the market -- smaller properties that need rehabilitation for resale -- you have probably found that traditional lenders cannot give you the money or the terms to make the deal work. Hard money lenders, on the other hand, love these deals and can get you in control of the property very quickly.