New to Real Estate investing and looking on getting started in Multi-Family

[Jacob Rickard]

Hi! I am looking to get started investing in real estate investing this year and I wanted to start by house hacking a multifamily property. Ideally for me, I think something with 2-4 units would be reasonable, however in my area a property like that would go for roughly 650k-900k. Personally, I don't think I could get approved for an FHA loan of that size because while I do have a reasonably high (or what I believe is high) credit score (760ish) I only have about 2 years of credit history and don't have a high enough income to qualify either.

However, fortunately I do have access to a partner that would be willing to loan me an amount to cover what I can't of the down payment, and cosign, given that I would eventually "buyout" whatever equity they would hold in the property and pay them interest until I do just that. I am fairly certain that with my partners cosign, we could be approved of an amount within the assumed purchase price that I mentioned before.

My question is, let's say I find a property that is $800k and have to put 5% down; how would we go about getting the loan? Would a traditional bank be willing to listen to us or would we probably need a different type of lender? Are you still able to get an FHA loan on a multifamily property if one of the "owners" isn't living in the property? Is there an easier way to finance this that I am not thinking about?

Like I said, I am new to real estate investing, so any advice that you think would be helpful, even if it is off topic, I would really appreciate. Thank you for your help!

[Raymond J. Rodrigues]

Hi @Jacob Rickard, if buying this as a primary residence, you'll definitely want to start off with an FHA loan which will allow you to use 75% of the tenant occupied units as rental income to help you further qualify for the property. Happy to answer any questions that you may have!