Recently I had a dentist come to me and ask if I would purchase a property using his money and have him as my hard money lender. Now I know your probably thinking “well why would he come to you?” because I was wondering the same thing when it first came to my attention.

This is what happened.

I have a construction company that was doing work on the dentist’s son’s house (who is a doctor by the way). And the dentist saw our work and wanted us to do some things to his house as well.

He lives in Staten Island NY and we are based here in the Newark NJ area. Anyway one day the dentist tells my project manager that he was ready to buy a house that could be flipped basically.  So of course the manager told him about me and what I do.

The doctor told him to give me his number and for me to call.

Immediately I thought to myself this is going to be a waste of time because a hard money lender could go anywhere to get this done, so I didn’t call for the first week.

My project manager told me the following week that he was waiting for my call. By this time I figured well maybe he’s motivated if he keeps asking about my calling so I gave him a call.

Long story short, he seemed very anxious and motivated and he made an appointment to meet with me in Jersey.

We met up and the meeting was only for about twenty minutes. So now I’m thinking “wow, he is really motivated since he drove about a half an hour to come here only for a fifteen to twenty minute visit“.

In the meeting he informed me that he didn’t want to purchase for himself. He actually wanted me to purchase and do what I do but he would fund the deal. He was only interested in becoming a hard money lender, not an investor.

Seriously? I thought. Well I need to move quick before he changes his mind.

The following week was actually a holiday week so it took me two weeks to find a good deal for him to fund.

Then it happened.

I called and he said he would call me back but I received no returned phone call. Then I had the project manager call and he said he got no answer or return call.

So after waiting a couple of days, I decided I would call him today.

I asked if he changed his mind because my time is valuable and I don’t want to waste it if he was not serious about being a hard money lender and he hit me with “I have a pending deal with someone in Brooklyn. If it doesn’t work out I will call you back.”

For real? Did he really have me waste my time?

Because of the person I am I probably will not answer the call if that deal falls through because he already wasted like two weeks of my time already. Hard money lender or not, I have no time for games.

How crazy is it to lose a hard money lender before you even got ‘em even after he came to you?