We can work with borrowers to utilize a “soft pull” credit history service such as CreditKarma.com (and avoid hard credit checks).
It is important to us to know if potential borrowers are in currently in financial trouble. We are a hard money lender, so our loan decisions are primarily based on the underlying value of the property ("hard asset"); However, even as hard money lenders, we do consider recent credit related behavior among other factors. We will typically review credit history for each human borrower. We are not looking for a minimum credit score, but will evaluate recent credit history focusing primarily on the following aspects:
Related recent bankruptcies
Related recent foreclosure proceedings
Judgments
Recent history of late payments
Currently owed payments that are past due
We look at the each loan as a whole package including the asset, the borrowers and the market.