20% downpayment typical for an investment property?

[Pedro Oliva]

I have been wanting to get into multifamily investments for a while now. The financing though seems to be a stumbling block and feel like it just takes all the wind out of my sails. Everything I keep reading is that if I seek financing for an investment property that I will most likely need to come up with at least 20% down plus closing costs. This seems like it would make things rather difficult if especially one would then be netting a couple hundred bucks in cash flow from said property and then trying to purchase another investment property to come up with 20% or more down again. If these properties are say $100k, then you are looking at least $40k just for downpayment on only 2 properties. This would be rather scary to me is this was my whole nest egg and risking it on only 2 properties. Am I correct in thinking that this is just the way it is? Should I just forget real estate financing since I do not have the capital to put up on these downpayment requirements?

[Hattie Dizmond]

Read Ben Leybovich's latest blog post...

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2014/09/16/is-it-really-necessary-to-make-a-down-payment/

Lenders want you to have skin in the game...shared risk.  You're going to have to either get creative or do some flips &/or wholesale deals to generate additional capital.