Cogo Capital — The Private Money Company Reviews 181

There are pros and cons with this lender.

PROS
-Willing to lend up to 90% of purchase price and 100% of reno costs, provided the combination of the two do not exceed 65% of ARV

-Expect you to purchase lender title insurance at closing, and non-owner occupied hazard insurance. These two items appear to be industry standard costs.

CONS
-Are not transparent will ALL costs of doing business with them. For example, during my vetting process, there was no mention of title and hazard insurance. Capturing all lender costs become critical when evaluating your net profit margin on a property. I have a very thorough profit margin calculator that helps me identify whether a property is worth pursuing. I shared this with the lender, and not once did they indicate I needed to add these additional costs.

-Require a reno estimate from a state, insurance, bond certified contractor. However, you do not have to use this contractor, and can elect to do the work yourself or sub it out. This requirement greatly affects a timely closing for a cash deal. Many contractors are booked weeks out and cannot produce an estimate quickly. Additionally, I ended up having a better grasp on budget and cost savings suppliers/measures. So, at the end of the day, it was a needless time suck. I have spoken with other investors who were able to submit their own reno estimate.

-Require a property appraisal to verify your comps on ARV. This appraisal is dependent on the reno estimate, so they can account for improvement value. Again, this further slows down a timely closing for a cash deal. Other investors have provided realtor comps that are then verified by the lender. What makes the appraisal process worse, is you MUST use an appraiser affiliated with Appraisal Nation. And if you need that appraisal sooner than 14 days, they charge you an expedite fee. My appraisal fee was $650+ to get an appraisal in the next 7 days. This is substantially higher than the $300-$400 standard rate.

-Takes 21-24 days to get cash in hand. All the above points cause drag on what needs to be a streamlined cash-closing process. Timing is so critical, not just to beat out the competition in an offer, but to follow through on the cash offer benefits, namely 2 weeks to close vs a month or more.

I lost my deal, because the seller did not want to wait beyond 18 business days from the offer acceptance.

There not afraid to give a chance with training Faith based company when others turn you down .

I didn't know what to expect. But once I got settled in I found it to be very informative. Financial literacy and passing wealth to the next generation this subject matter is not taught in the public school system. The instructor was excellent and the networking was great! Look forward to working with the organization in the future.

Incredibly professional with tons and tons of amazing information that I doubt is available anywhere else.

It’s been an amazing experience, ant wait to the tomorrow that includes financial freedom!

Thank you Gary and all the speakers for the awesome and enlightening experience. Thank you Cogo for this opportunity.
I would recommend this for anyone who want to change their lives now.

I have been to many real estate classes but this is more than I ever have learned from any class ever!

Cogo has great options if you are looking for funds to invest.

Excellent training and fantastic support makes a dynamic combination. I learned so many different ways to make money with real estate! I can't wait to dig into more information to begin investing and creating multiple streams of income.

Gary and crew were awesome! Love that cogo Capital is partnered with them.

Very informative presentations as to the available systems and strategies to maximize earnings in real estate

Gained more info than I would think from a free workshop.

This is an amazing Group which can help you when you think that you can't qualify, they go beyond what any other group can do for you, I have never experienced this type of help and partnership to a company which stands behind you when you work with them, thank you very much.

Hank H

Simplicity Great communication, Efficient great use of technology to simplify the process.. will be doing another closing in 1 week

We started the process with Cogo in July and closed in September. The process was long, frustrating, tears, and lots of paperwork for our 1st deal.
1st off i would strongly suggest not to use a broker and to go straight through the company themselves. A lot of what happened was miscommunication or lost emails.
The process was very long, they had underwriters whom asked for items that were already in the system and through emails. I sent out a lot of the emails with files 3-4 times. There were times when they said they didn't receive it. That's where you are to be trusting your broker.
We wish that we were told that besides the appraisal, we should of gotten septic check, water checked from the very beginning of the loan process. We were stressed out a lot from trying to get it all done within a couple of days of trying to close. It was crazy.
The biggest thing for us was not being able to talk to the underwriter. When we called we would go into voice mail for her.

But, in the end we got the loan,. Everyone pulled together and we have our first FLIP.

We are very excited and plan on using COGO again! A special thank you to NINA. She was outstanding!! Thank you NINA!!

Hard work comes to those that work hard. In this case , dealing with COGO was a breeze because of loan Officer's like Robert Homewood and T Chiono. Cogo capital removed all doubts by closing on my loan. "WHEN BANKS SAY NO COGO SAYS YES..I HAPPY TO HAVE BEEN A MEMBER OF THE COGO

It was great working with CoGo again. This is my 6th loan and I am glad to have CoGo helping me grow my business.

I signed up with Cogo with a former employee who told me that i would be paying a background check fee of $197. Fine..I did that...was assigned a loan officer...at first this loan officer seamed Ok..young and inexperienced you could tell...but the main problem with him...just he was very hard to reach...I did bring a property to him...after my deal fell thru...I hustled to find another property..These real estate deals close pretty quickly...and I left so many message trying to reach him..it was ridiculous. Then I spoke to this manager who's manner was worse then acid reflux...he did not want to refund my "background/credit" check fee...and he was very condescending.. I promise you I have not had such a bad experience in doing business with someone like that in a while...I would clear away from a HMLs who do not make themselves readily available to lend you money and who charges ambiguous upfront fees. You think?