First-Time Flipper Loans in Knoxville, TN —
No Track Record Required
We don't care whether this is your first deal or your twelfth. There's no minimum number of completed flips, because what we're underwriting is the property and your plan for it. Chris and Flynt read every file themselves — and they've flipped houses of their own. Rates from 9.99%, 2–3 points, up to 90% of purchase price and 70% of ARV, from $50,000, on 9-month terms. Closings in 10–14 days.
- No minimum deal count
- No tax returns or W-2s
- No full appraisal on most deals
- You talk to the owners
★★★★★ 30 five-star Google reviews · 300+ loans and $53M+ funded since 2021 · 65% repeat borrowers
Qualifying without a track record
Your first deal doesn't have to look like your tenth. Over half our borrowers have flipped before — the rest started somewhere, and this is where.
Forget the bank application. We're not pulling two years of tax returns or asking an employer to verify your salary, and there's no full appraisal on most deals. That matters more than it sounds, because a lot of people getting into flipping are self-employed, and the paperwork alone kills deals before they start.
What we actually look at:
- The property — purchase price, condition, and what it's worth once the work is done
- Your rehab budget and scope, so the draw schedule matches how the job will really run
- Your own money in the deal. We lend up to 90% of purchase price, so you're bringing the rest. That's not a hurdle we invented — it's what gives the deal room when rehab costs run over, which they usually do
- Your exit — a sale, or a refinance into a hold
- Your credit, read as a pattern rather than a score
About credit, plainly
Credit matters and we won't pretend otherwise. What we're reading is whether you generally meet your obligations — not a threshold number. A low score from one bad stretch, a medical bill, a divorce, a rough year, isn't an automatic no. Tell us what happened. You'll be explaining it to the person actually deciding, not to a committee in another state. A sustained pattern of missed obligations is a different conversation, and we'd rather have it honestly on the first call.
Experience affects your leverage and your pricing. It doesn't decide whether we'll work with you.
What the process actually looks like
Five steps, and you're talking to the same two people the whole way through.
Send us the deal
Property address or contract, purchase price, your rehab budget, and how you plan to exit. That's enough for a real conversation.
We review and quote terms
Our own comps and our own opinion of value, with third-party evaluation from photos and video. No full appraisal on most deals, no committee.
Commitment letter
Rate, points, leverage, and term in writing — and those don't move between here and the closing table.
Close in 10 to 14 days
What controls the timeline is how ready your file is on day one, not our underwriting.
Draw as the work gets done
Video walkthrough of each finished phase, funded the next business day. No inspector to schedule, no invoices, no lien releases.
The permit trap nobody warns first-timers about
Most first-time flippers don't think about permits until a contractor is standing in the kitchen asking who's pulling the electrical.
Work touching electrical, plumbing, mechanical, or structural systems is permitted through the City of Knoxville Codes Administration — or the county's own codes office if the property sits in unincorporated Knox County. Cosmetic work, paint and flooring and fixtures, generally isn't. The trouble is that people classify their scope wrong and find out weeks later.
Historic districts add a second layer
Several of the neighborhoods where the flip inventory actually is — Fourth and Gill, Old North Knoxville, Fort Sanders, Mechanicsville, Edgewood-Park City — sit in designated historic districts with their own design guidelines. Exterior changes there require a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic Zoning Commission before the building permit is issued.
That means swapping windows, changing a front porch, or altering the roofline isn't a same-day permit — it goes to a commission that meets on a schedule. Weeks matter when you're carrying interest on borrowed money, and this is the single most common reason a first flip in these neighborhoods runs long.
- Before you close, call the codes office and ask about the timeline for your specific scope
- If the property is in a historic district, ask whether your exterior scope needs a Certificate of Appropriateness and when the commission next meets
- Build that calendar into your rehab schedule and your interest carry, not into your optimism
How this affects your draws with us
It doesn't. We fund draws off video of completed work, not off a permit card — so a permit delay never holds up money for work that's already done. What a permit delay does stop is your contractor doing the next phase at all. That's a schedule problem rather than a lender problem, and it's yours to plan around.
When this isn't the right loan
We'd rather tell you now than after you've spent two weeks gathering documents.
- You're buying a house to live in. We're a business-purpose lender. A regular mortgage will cost you far less, and owner-occupied isn't something we do at all.
- You want 100% financing with no cash at closing. Hard money always needs some of your money in the deal — unless you hold equity in another property we can cross-collateralize, which is a real option worth asking about.
- It's land, a mobile home park, or an RV park. Hard exclusions.
- The property is outside Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, or Virginia.
- There's no exit plan — not even a rough one. If you can't say how you get out, that's a warning for you as much as for us.
- The spread is thin. If the purchase price sits too close to what the finished house sells for, there's no room for surprises. Rehabs always have surprises.
- You want long-term debt on a stabilized rental. That's a different product — our fix & hold loan covers the front half, and we can facilitate the DSCR takeout through our network.
And if you haven't lined up a contractor, a budget, or a rough timeline yet — fix that before you apply. A loan can't solve a plan that doesn't exist. None of this means come back never. It means come back when the deal, the timeline, and the plan line up.
Investors on working with us
All 30 of our Google reviews are five stars.
"Most lenders make things complicated, but Chris' team makes it simple to get a fix & flip loan."
— Caleb Luketic"Working directly with decision makers is invaluable when it comes to lenders."
— David Maier"Local expertise and willingness to problem solve set them apart."
— Brennan LiuRelated loan programs
Same capital, same people, different shape of deal.
Fix & Flip Loans
The full picture on purchase-and-rehab financing: how we size the loan, how draws run, and what catches flippers out in Knoxville.
Fix & flip loans →Fix & Hold / BRRRR
Keeping it as a rental instead of selling? Same purchase-and-rehab loan, with a refinance as the exit.
Fix & hold loans →Bridge Loans
Short-term financing when your capital is tied up in one property and the next deal won't wait.
Bridge loans for investors →Rescue Closings
Your lender backed out days before closing. Roughly one in five loans we write is a deal somebody else was supposed to fund.
Rescue close financing →Cash-Out Refinance
Once you own it and it's stabilized, pull equity back out and put it into the next one.
Investment property cash-out →New Construction
Building rather than rehabbing, on a lot you already control. Single-family, Tennessee only.
New construction loans →See the full picture of our hard money lending across Tennessee.
First-time flipper questions
Found your first deal?
Call and talk it through with Chris or Flynt. One conversation tells you whether the numbers work, what it costs, and what to fix before you go under contract.
(865) 999-8083