Getting a mortgage on an LLC property

[Debbie Zimmer]

Hello everyone! I’m hoping you can provide some guidance to us on this subject.

Background: 

We are new investors and have set up an LLC with a Line of Credit attached. We used the Line of Credit to pay cash for our first rental property, as well as the renovations. The rental property is titled in the LLC. Now that we have it renovated and rented, we would like to take out a first mortgage on the house so that we can pay back our Line of Credit so that we can go purchase another property (sounds easy on paper). This was our Business Plan – pay cash using LOC, renovate and rent/resell and pay back LOC - buy another property - repeat. We went to a bank that loans to LLCs, and had to provide them everything on our personal finances in order to apply for a loan. We got declined for the loan due to our personal financial credit (we have a lot of moving parts right now trying to get this real estate gig off the ground). Even though we are sitting on a completely renovated house with 100% equity, and we have a nice portfolio secured for investing and we still both work full time with decent salaries – the bank was concerned about our credit scores ☹. One of the main reasons for starting an LLC with a separate LOC, was to keep it separate from our personal.

Does anyone have any advice or recommendations on how to get around all the red tape? It is really putting a wrench in our Business Plan.

Thank you!  Debbie