Best strategy for financing / refinancing

[Dennis Jones]

Hello BP members,

I am a newbie and need your advice on financing / refinancing strategies.

Me and my partner have $300K cash to invest. We will invest for cash flow, buying properties that need rehab, rehab them(my partner has experience in rehabs) and than renting them.

Our market is South side of Chicago, 1-4 unit houses.

Both of us have very good credit score, but low annual income for last 3 years.

I am trying to understand what's the best way in our case to leverage our cash on hand and get best cash on cash return.

Options i see:

1. Financing the purchase & rehab through bank - since we don't have low annual income, and banks don't like to deal with rehabs this option is out.

2. Financing the purchase & rehab through landers - the terms are not optimal comparing to bank.

3. Buying properties for cash, rehabing for cash and refinancing in 6 months through the bank - seems like in our case that's the optimal strategy to leveraging on good terms.

Am i right here?

Also we were planning to form LLC, but since the loan terms for LLC are usually worse, we are thinking of keeping the properties under out names, at least for the first couple of years while the number of our properties is low. Will we be able to do bank refinancing when 50% of property is under my name, and 50% under his name?