Risk Disclosure Statement

The Borrower may fail to make payments of interest, principal, taxes, insurance, or other required charges when due. Default may result from cost overruns, construction delays, contractor failure, permit denial, market downturn, tenant default, vacancy, loss of the Borrower’s primary income, fraud, divorce, illness, death, or any other reason. Default is common in short-term business-purpose lending; underwriting cannot eliminate it. In the event of default, the Lender’s remedies are limited to those provided in the loan documents and under applicable state law, and the value realized through foreclosure or trustee’s sale may be substantially less than the unpaid principal balance.

The value of the Property may decline below the purchase price, the as-is value, the after-repair value (“ARV”), or the unpaid principal balance of the Loan. Real-estate values are driven by interest-rate cycles, local employment, demographic shifts, school-district changes, zoning, traffic patterns, climate and flood-zone reclassification, environmental contamination, neighborhood crime, supply pipeline, capitalization-rate compression or expansion, and many other factors outside any party’s control. Declines can be sudden, severe, and persistent. Comparable sales, broker price opinions, and appraisals are estimates and are routinely wrong.

A Loan is not a liquid asset. There is no exchange or active secondary market for private real-estate loans, and there is no guarantee that the Lender will be able to sell, syndicate, hypothecate, or otherwise transfer a Loan before maturity at any price, much less at par. Even if a buyer can be found, transfer is generally subject to assignment-of-mortgage recording, title-insurance endorsements, due-on-sale provisions, lender-consent provisions, and other friction. Borrowers similarly may be unable to refinance, sell, or otherwise exit the Property before the Loan’s maturity, with the result that the balloon payment may come due before any exit is available.

A Lender funding a single private real-estate Loan is exposed to the credit of one Borrower, the value of one Property, the integrity of one set of loan documents, the lien position of one priority, the underwriting of one transaction, and the law and courts of one jurisdiction. There is no diversification within the Loan. A Lender concentrated in a single asset class, geography, sponsor, or strategy is exposed to common-mode failures that affect every Loan in the portfolio simultaneously.

Private real-estate lending does not use institutional credit-underwriting tools. There is no required minimum FICO score, debt-to-income test, residual-income test, or QM rule applicable to business-purpose Loans. Lenders typically rely on collateral coverage (loan-to-value, loan-to-cost), Borrower track record, and informal references. None of these inputs is verified by Hardline. Credit reports, background checks, judgment searches, and bankruptcy searches if obtained are point-in-time snapshots; financial condition can deteriorate rapidly and without notice.

Many private real-estate Loans finance rehabilitation, construction, or repositioning. Operational execution risk includes: rehab budget overruns; subcontractor walk-offs; theft of materials; vandalism; weather; permit delay; inspection failure; change orders; ARV miscalculation; market shifts during the rehab period; lien-waiver disputes; mechanics’-lien claims; and many other failure modes. Cost overruns are the norm, not the exception, on construction and rehab Loans. The Borrower may exhaust the contingency reserve and be unable to complete the project. A Lender that controls draws may be required to fund completion, foreclose on a partially completed asset, or both.

Borrowers know more than Lenders about the Property, the contractor, the local market, prior offers and rejections, environmental conditions, occupancy history, and use of proceeds. Lenders cannot eliminate this asymmetry through diligence; they can only reduce it. Borrowers should assume that a Lender will discover material adverse facts only after closing, and should not rely on closing as evidence that no such facts exist.

Interest rates, origination points, underwriting fees, document-preparation fees, inspection fees, draw fees, and default-rate interest on private real-estate Loans are routinely several multiples of comparable bank financing. An effective annual cost of capital (interest, points, and fees combined) in the high teens or low twenties is common on short-term Loans. The Borrower bears this cost in full. Comparison with bank financing is appropriate only after taking into account speed of close, light-touch underwriting, and willingness to lend on properties banks will not finance — advantages that have a real but Borrower-specific value.

Loans are typically six (6) to twenty-four (24) months in term, with most or all of the principal due in a single balloon payment at maturity. If the Borrower cannot refinance, sell, or otherwise pay off the Loan at maturity, the Loan will go into default, and the Lender may foreclose, demand a deed-in-lieu, charge default interest, accelerate the Loan, or pursue any combination of remedies. Market conditions at maturity may be very different from market conditions at origination; refinance availability is not guaranteed.

Most private real-estate Loans require one or more personal guaranties from the principals of the borrowing entity and, in many cases, their spouses. A personal guaranty exposes the guarantor’s personal assets — including bank accounts, brokerage accounts, real estate, vehicles, jewelry, and future wages — to collection in the event of default. Personal guaranties survive entity dissolution, bankruptcy of the borrowing entity, and (in some states) the death of the guarantor. Some Loans include “bad-boy” (non-recourse) carve-outs that convert a non-recourse loan into full-recourse upon misrepresentation, fraud, voluntary bankruptcy filing, environmental contamination, or other triggers.

A Lender may require additional security beyond the subject Property — including liens on other investment properties owned by the Borrower or guarantor, assignment of rents, pledge of equity interests, account-control agreements over the Borrower’s bank accounts, and personal-property security interests under UCC Article 9. Default on the subject Loan can result in seizure of every cross-collateralized asset, even if the value of those assets exceeds the principal balance of the defaulted Loan.

Loan documents commonly impose a default rate of interest that is two (2) or more multiples of the contract rate, applied retroactively to the date of default and compounded. Late charges of five percent (5%) or more of the missed payment are common. These charges accrue daily and can substantially increase the payoff balance over a short period.

Rental Loans frequently include lock-box and deposit-account-control arrangements under which tenants’ rent is paid directly to a Lender-designated account, with the Lender having the unilateral right to sweep funds upon default. Construction and rehab Loans typically condition advances on inspector certification of work completion, lien waivers from subcontractors and material suppliers, and the absence of any default; an inspector dispute can stop funding mid-project. The Borrower remains liable for paying subcontractors even if the Lender refuses to advance funds.

Most states permit non-judicial foreclosure (trustee’s sale) on commercial deeds of trust, which can be completed in as little as ninety (90) days from a notice of default. Judicial foreclosure in deed-of-mortgage states is slower but still typically faster on a commercial loan than on a residential loan. Some states impose redemption periods; some do not. Some states permit deficiency judgments; some do not. The Borrower can lose the Property without going to court and without an opportunity to cure, depending on the state and the loan documents.

By signing a business-purpose certification, the Borrower waives application of the Truth in Lending Act, Regulation Z, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, Regulation X, the Homeownership and Equity Protection Act, the ability-to-repay rules under 12 C.F.R. § 1026.43, and the SAFE Act’s loan-originator licensing regime. If the Borrower later occupies the Property as a residence, applies proceeds to personal expenditures, or otherwise undermines the business-purpose certification, the Loan may be recharacterized as a consumer Loan after the fact. Recharacterization can give the Borrower a TILA rescission claim against the Lender; it can also expose the Borrower to fraud, false-statement, and breach-of-warranty claims by the Lender and by Hardline.

Foreclosure procedures, redemption periods, anti-deficiency rules, one-action rules (e.g., California Code of Civil Procedure § 726), single-action rules, fair-value statutes, junior-lien wipe-out rules, mechanics’-lien priority, and prepayment-penalty limits vary materially among the fifty states. A Loan that is enforceable in Texas may be partially or entirely unenforceable in Arizona, and vice versa. The Borrower should obtain independent legal advice from counsel licensed in the state where the Property is located before signing any loan document.

Origination fees, document-preparation fees, inspection fees, title charges, escrow fees, recording fees, transfer taxes, prepaid interest, insurance escrows, and tax escrows are typically deducted from the Loan proceeds at closing, reducing the cash actually delivered to the Borrower. The Borrower may receive substantially less than the face amount of the Loan and must still repay the face amount with interest.

License laws, usury caps, foreclosure procedures, redemption periods, deficiency-judgment rules, anti-deficiency statutes, prepayment-penalty restrictions, homestead exemptions, dower rights, community-property and tenancy-by-the-entirety rules, mechanics’-lien priority, transfer taxes, recording requirements, and notarial-acknowledgment standards differ from state to state. You are responsible for understanding the law of every state in which you operate, including the state of the Borrower entity’s formation, the state of the Borrower entity’s principal place of business, the state where the Property is located, and (for a Lender) the state from which the Lender markets and originates the Loan.

The Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z generally do not apply to business-purpose Loans on non-owner-occupied property, but apply if the Loan is recharacterized as consumer credit. RESPA generally does not apply, but RESPA Section 8 (anti-kickback) may. The SAFE Act’s loan-originator licensing rules generally do not apply to business-purpose Loans, but state SAFE Act analogs sometimes do. The Bank Secrecy Act’s residential mortgage loan-origination AML rules (31 C.F.R. Part 1029) do not on their face cover commercial real-estate Lenders, but the AML/CFT National Priorities, future FinCEN rulemakings (including the residential-real-estate beneficial-ownership reporting rule effective December 1, 2025), the Corporate Transparency Act’s beneficial-ownership reporting regime, OFAC sanctions, and IRS information reporting all apply or may apply. ECOA, the Fair Housing Act, the FCRA (when credit reports are pulled), and HMDA (when volume crosses the residential reporting threshold) all may apply to private Lenders.

Federal and state regulators have indicated interest in private real-estate lending, fix-and-flip lending, build-to-rent lending, and short-term commercial bridge lending. Future rulemakings, enforcement actions, or court decisions may impose new licensing, disclosure, reporting, or substantive requirements on existing Loans, may invalidate existing Loans, or may give Borrowers new rescission or damages claims. The legal environment can change after origination, and Lenders should not assume that the state of the law on the day a Loan closes is the state of the law on the day the Loan is collected.

Loans documented and marketed as business-purpose may later be treated as consumer-credit transactions by courts, regulators, or trustees in bankruptcy, particularly where the Property is small in size, the Borrower is a sole-member LLC, the Borrower or a family member occupies the Property at any point during the Loan term, the proceeds are commingled with personal funds, or the original business plan is abandoned. Recharacterization can give the Borrower TILA rescission rights (15 U.S.C. § 1635), TILA statutory damages, RESPA damages, HOEPA damages, and attorneys’ fees. For a Lender, recharacterization can mean unwinding of the Loan, voiding of the security interest, statutory damages exceeding the Loan balance, and exposure to private and regulatory enforcement.

Federally chartered banks, federally chartered credit unions, and certain federally chartered thrifts enjoy preemption of state usury caps under the National Bank Act and similar statutes. Private non-bank Lenders typically do not. The most-favored-lender doctrine, “valid-when-made” rules, and rent-a-bank arrangements have all been the subject of recent litigation and rulemaking, and their availability to private Lenders is uncertain. Choice-of-law clauses in loan documents are policed strictly by courts (see Adar Bays, LLC v. GeneSYS ID, Inc., 37 N.Y.3d 320 (2021)), and selecting a usurious rate even with a forum-state choice-of-law clause is dangerous.

Hardline does not currently make the Service available in New York, New Jersey, or Illinois. The list of available states may change without notice. Even in states where the Service is available, your activity may require a license, registration, exemption, or filing. Hardline does not provide licensing advice and does not represent that any User is licensed in any state.

The Service may contain bugs, may produce inaccurate or out-of-date data, may compute LTV, ARV, debt-service coverage, or other metrics incorrectly, may display a stale view of an underlying record, may misroute messages, may corrupt or lose uploaded documents, may suffer extended unscheduled downtime, and may behave unpredictably across browsers, devices, and network conditions. Hardline does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or fitness for any particular purpose of any information displayed on the Service.

Hardline depends on third-party vendors, including Supabase, Inc. (database, authentication, file storage), Vercel Inc. (hosting and edge delivery), Stripe, Inc. (identity verification and any future payments), and Resend (transactional email). Any of these vendors may suffer outages, data loss, breaches, billing disputes, abrupt service changes, or termination of services to Hardline. Hardline’s ability to maintain the Service depends on the continued performance of these vendors and Hardline has limited control over them.

Hardline is an early-stage company. Hardline may, at any time, modify, suspend, restrict, or discontinue the Service, with or without notice and with or without continued availability of data export, deal history, or message history. The Service may cease to exist. A Loan originated through the Service is not dependent on the Service for its legal enforceability, but if the Service is discontinued, you may lose access to deal-room records, document repositories, message logs, and other information that resides on the Service.

Hardline may suspend or terminate your account for any reason or no reason, with or without notice, under Section 17 of the Terms of Service. Suspension may interrupt your access to active deals, messages, and documents. Loans originated before suspension remain legally binding between the parties regardless of account status.

Despite reasonable safeguards, the Service may be subject to unauthorized access, breach, or exfiltration of data. Sensitive documents you upload (tax returns, financial statements, leases, photographs, scope-of-work documents, appraisals, identity documents) may be exposed. Hardline will provide notice of any data breach as required by law, but cannot eliminate the risk of breach. You should treat the Service as a business communication channel, not as a vault.

LTV, LTC, ARV, debt-service coverage, cap rate, yield, points, default-rate accruals, and any other metric displayed on the Service is illustrative and may be wrong. You will independently verify every figure before relying on it for any decision.

Hardline does not guarantee that any deal will be listed, that any term sheet will be accepted, that any Loan will close, that any closed Loan will perform, that any defaulted Loan will be recovered, or that any User on the Service will respond to any communication. The Service is a marketplace, not a guarantor of transactions.

Hardline may, now or in the future, charge fees to Lenders, Borrowers, or both; offer premium subscriptions; sell add-on services such as integrations with title, escrow, e-sign, or document-preparation vendors; receive referral or revenue-share compensation from such vendors; and operate co-branded or affiliated services. These business relationships may create incentives that do not perfectly align with the interests of any individual User. Hardline is not a fiduciary and does not warrant that its commercial relationships are entirely free of conflicts. Material conflicts will be disclosed in the Terms of Service and in this Risk Disclosure as they arise.

Interest received by a Lender is generally taxable as ordinary income in the year accrued or received, depending on the Lender’s method of accounting. Default-rate interest, late charges, exit fees, and yield-maintenance premiums are generally treated as interest or as additional consideration for the use of money, with character that may differ across jurisdictions.

Points paid by a Borrower at closing are generally deductible by the Borrower ratably over the term of the Loan (or, in limited circumstances, in the year paid) and are includable as additional yield by the Lender. Loans with deeply discounted issue prices may give rise to original issue discount (“OID”) under Internal Revenue Code §§ 1271–1275, which the Lender must accrue and report as interest income before cash receipt. Mistakes in OID classification can produce phantom income for the Lender.

If a Loan is modified, forgiven, settled at a discount, or discharged in foreclosure or bankruptcy, the Borrower may realize cancellation-of-debt (“COD”) income under Internal Revenue Code § 61(a)(11), subject to specific exclusions (insolvency, qualified real-property business debt, bankruptcy). The amount and character of COD income depend on the structure of the workout and the Borrower’s tax attributes.

Lenders may have an obligation to issue Form 1098 (mortgage interest from a natural person on a Loan secured by real property), Form 1099-INT (interest income above the reporting threshold), Form 1099-A (acquisition or abandonment of secured property), and Form 1099-C (cancellation of debt) to the Borrower and to the IRS. Failure to file or furnish required forms can result in penalties.

State income, mortgage-recording, intangibles, and franchise taxes may apply to interest income, to loan documents, or to the lender entity. Some states impose mortgage recording or documentary taxes at substantial rates. You will consult counsel and tax advisors in each relevant state.

In a Chapter 11 reorganization (and, for individual Borrowers, Chapter 13), a debtor may propose a plan that reduces the principal balance of the Loan to the value of the collateral (a “strip-down” or “cramdown”), extends the maturity, lowers the interest rate, or changes the payment schedule, over the Lender’s objection, subject to limited statutory protections.

Payments made by the Borrower in the ninety (90) days (or, for insiders, one year) before a bankruptcy filing may be recovered from the Lender as avoidable preferences under 11 U.S.C. § 547. Transfers of the Property or of Loan proceeds may be avoided as fraudulent transfers under 11 U.S.C. § 548 or applicable state Uniform Voidable Transactions Act if made for less than reasonably equivalent value while the Borrower was insolvent. Recently recorded liens may be avoidable as preferential.

A bankruptcy trustee may “abandon” collateral of inconsequential value or burdensome to the estate. The Lender may receive the Property back, subject to all senior liens, all unpaid taxes, all environmental liabilities, and all deferred maintenance.

Under 11 U.S.C. § 510(c) and analogous state-law doctrines, a court may subordinate a Lender’s claim to the claims of other creditors, or recharacterize the Loan as equity, if the Lender engaged in inequitable conduct, if the Loan documents are not commercially reasonable, or if the Lender exercised disproportionate control over the Borrower’s business. Lock-box, draw-control, and bad-boy carve-out provisions are subject to scrutiny in this context.

A Borrower considering bankruptcy faces credit, tax (COD), property-loss, guaranty-pursuit, and dischargeability risks. Recent statutes and case law restrict the dischargeability of debts arising from fraud, false statements to a Lender, and personal-guaranty obligations. A bankruptcy filed in bad faith to forestall foreclosure is itself a basis for stay relief.

Securities laws assume that an investor in a pooled vehicle delegates discretion to a fiduciary manager and is protected by registration, disclosure, anti-fraud, and adviser-conduct rules. None of those protections applies to you on the Service. You select the Borrower, you negotiate the terms, you sign the documents in your own name (or in the name of your single-purpose lending entity), you fund the wire, and you bear the risk. The Service does not insulate you from Borrower-counterparty risk and does not provide a recovery fund. There is no SIPC-style customer-protection regime, no investor-arbitration forum (other than ordinary commercial arbitration if your loan documents so provide), and no regulator with statutory authority to compensate you for Borrower fraud.

Your principal is not insured by FDIC, NCUA, SIPC, or any other federal or state insurance regime. The Property is the principal source of recovery in the event of default; if the Property’s liquidation value is less than the unpaid principal balance plus accrued interest, costs of foreclosure, and unpaid taxes, you will not be made whole.

If the Borrower misrepresents identity, ownership, valuation, intended use of proceeds, occupancy, lien position, or any other fact, your remedies are limited to private civil litigation against the Borrower and any guarantor and (if applicable) referral to law enforcement. There is no regulatory restitution fund. Borrowers may be judgment-proof; they may relocate; they may file for bankruptcy; they may transfer assets; they may invoke homestead exemptions. Recovery in fraud cases is statistically low.

You face wire-fraud risk twice: when you receive wiring instructions for the Borrower or closing agent, and when third parties impersonate you to redirect closing or pay-off proceeds. Verify every wire by voice call to a previously verified number.Maintain a callable policy for every funding wire. Consider holding closing wires in your bank’s receiving account until the closing agent confirms receipt. See Section 6 above.

If a Loan documented as business-purpose is later treated as a consumer-credit transaction, you may face personal liability for TILA, RESPA, HOEPA, FCRA, ECOA, FDCPA, and SAFE Act violations. Statutory damages, actual damages, attorneys’ fees, and (under HOEPA and TILA) rescission can exceed the unpaid principal balance. Loans on single-family homes, on small multifamily, on units occupied by anyone connected to the Borrower, and on Properties where personal-use proceeds slip into the closing settlement are most exposed.

You are responsible for confirming that your activity is licensed or exempt in the state of formation of the Borrower entity, the state of the Borrower entity’s principal place of business, the state where the Property is located, and the state from which you market and originate Loans. Unlicensed lending can void the Loan, bar interest collection, expose you to civil penalties (often per-Loan or per-day), and, in some states, constitute a misdemeanor or felony. Examples include the California Financing Law, the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act, the California Real Estate Law (for broker-arranged usury exemption), the Texas Finance Code regimes, the Florida Statutes Chapters 494 and 516, and the Illinois Residential Mortgage License Act. NMLS registration and individual MLO endorsement may also be required for some products. See Lender Addendum § A.2.

Each Loan must be tested for usury under the law of every plausibly applicable state. Test the rate together with all points, fees, default-rate interest, late charges, exit fees, and prepayment premiums, computed as an effective annual percentage rate over the actual term and the assumed-default term. A Loan that complies with the contract-rate cap may exceed the criminal-rate cap upon default. New York’s criminal usury cap (25%) interacts with the civil cap (16%) in complex ways and applies even to commercial loans below $2.5 million; California’s constitutional cap (10%) is broadly displaced for licensed lenders and broker-arranged loans, but improperly relied on by unlicensed lenders. Penalties for usury range from forfeiture of interest to forfeiture of all principal and interest to criminal liability. See Lender Addendum § A.3.

ECOA, Regulation B, and the Fair Housing Act apply to your underwriting decisions, marketing, and pricing. Disparate-impact theories can apply even where you do not intend to discriminate. Use of automated underwriting tools, third-party data, or scoring models can create unexpected exposure. Adverse-action notices must be provided in the timing and form ECOA requires. You bear this exposure individually, as a lender; Hardline does not provide ECOA or Fair Housing Act compliance services. See Lender Addendum § A.5.

For each Loan, identify the correct IRS reporting forms (Form 1098 for mortgage interest received from a natural-person Borrower; Form 1099-INT for interest received on certain Loans; Form 1099-A on acquisition or abandonment; Form 1099-C on cancellation of debt) and the deadlines for filing and furnishing. Penalties for late, missing, or incorrect filings can be substantial. State equivalents may also apply.

FinCEN’s residential-real-estate beneficial-ownership reporting rule (effective December 1, 2025) and the Corporate Transparency Act’s beneficial-ownership reporting regime impose new diligence and reporting obligations on certain transactions. OFAC sanctions apply to every transaction regardless of dollar amount. Lenders should maintain a written AML and sanctions program proportionate to their volume. Hardline’s identity-verification check at onboarding is a screening tool; it is not a substitute for your own program. See Lender Addendum § A.6.

You are responsible for collecting payments, applying payments per the loan documents, sending notices of default, accelerating, foreclosing, holding trustee’s sales, managing REO, evicting tenants, paying property taxes and insurance, complying with state-law foreclosure procedures, and (where applicable) registering as a debt collector. Servicing errors can void or impair remedies. Engaging a licensed third-party sub-servicer is an option but does not transfer ultimate legal responsibility from you.

Your security position is only as strong as your lien priority. Senior liens (property tax, municipal utility, HOA in super-lien states, prior mortgages, mechanics’ liens that relate back, judgment liens) can wipe out your collateral coverage. A lender’s title policy is the primary tool for managing this risk and you should not fund a Loan without one. Title-defect risks include forged signatures on prior deeds, undisclosed heirs, prior bankruptcy claims, prior divorce decrees affecting marital property, and prior mechanics’-lien claims that have not yet been recorded.

CERCLA (42 U.S.C. § 9601 et seq.), RCRA, state Superfund analogs, and state hazardous-waste statutes can impose joint-and-several liability for cleanup costs on owners and operators of contaminated property. The “secured-creditor exemption” protects a Lender that holds a security interest and does not participate in management, but the exemption is fact-sensitive and is lost if the Lender takes title (other than briefly, for the purpose of resale) or exercises operational control. A Lender that forecloses on a Property contaminated by underground storage tanks, methamphetamine residue, lead paint, mold, asbestos, PCBs, or PFAS may face cleanup costs exceeding the Property’s value. Phase I environmental site assessments are recommended on commercial and small-multifamily Properties before funding.

A lender’s title policy is not optional. Hazard insurance with the Lender named as mortgagee under a standard mortgagee clause is not optional. Flood insurance is required by federal law (12 U.S.C. § 4012a) on Properties in Special Flood Hazard Areas. Wind, earthquake, builder’s-risk, vacancy, business-interruption, and liability coverage may also be required depending on the Property. If insurance lapses, you may need to force-place coverage; force-placed coverage is expensive, often narrow, and does not include liability protection. Disputes about whether insurance proceeds are applied to restoration or to debt reduction are common on partial losses; the loan documents should govern.

If you raise capital from third parties to fund Loans on the Service — whether through a fund, an LLC, a syndicate, a participation, or a side-by-side investment — you may be conducting a securities offering. Compliance options typically include Regulation D, Rule 506(b) (no general solicitation; accredited and limited non-accredited investors; bad-actor disqualification), Rule 506(c) (general solicitation permitted; accredited investors only, with reasonable steps to verify accreditation), Rule 504, and state intrastate or limited-offering exemptions, in each case with Form D filings and state Blue Sky filings. Registration as an investment adviser at the federal or state level may be required for the manager. The Investment Company Act may restrict the structure of the lending vehicle. Anti-fraud rules under Rule 10b-5 and state law apply to all communications with investors regardless of registration. Compliance failures can give investors rescission rights, can result in SEC and state enforcement, and can expose principals to personal liability. Hardline does not facilitate securities offerings, and your use of the Service does not provide any safe harbor.

A Lender that is a non-U.S. person, or that lends through a non-U.S. entity, is subject to U.S. withholding tax under chapters 3 and 4 of the Internal Revenue Code (FATCA), to reduced rates under applicable treaties, and to W-8 documentation and IRS reporting obligations on the Borrower. The portfolio-interest exception (Internal Revenue Code § 871(h) and § 881(c)) may apply, but is fact-sensitive. U.S. persons holding foreign accounts in connection with their lending activity may have FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) and Form 8938 reporting obligations. Effectively-connected-income, U.S. real-property-interest (FIRPTA), and branch-profits issues may also arise. Consult counsel before lending cross-border.

Even on business-purpose Loans, RESPA Section 8’s anti-kickback rule may apply where the Loan is secured by a one-to-four-family Property. Referral fees, profit splits, and marketing-services agreements with title companies, escrow agents, appraisers, brokers, and platforms must be carefully structured. Hardline does not offer or solicit referral fees and prohibits them under the Lender Addendum.