Financing question - purchase properties with or without wife?

[Daniel Soovajian]

Hello,

My wife and I recently started our real estate investment journey, purchasing our first buy and hold investment property a few weeks ago. My credit was a fair amount better than hers so I ended up purchasing our first property exclusively in my name to secure the better lending terms than if she was included. I have two questions about our approach going forward with future purchases:

1) Now that we've closed on the property and the loan terms are solidified, would it make sense to add her to the property as another owner so that as we make on time payments over the years it will improve her credit score? The big downside I see with this approach is that we could only purchase 10 properties with loans through Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac if both our names are on each loan vs. being able to purchase 20 properties through Fannie/Freddie if we purchase each property in only one of our names.

2) We both have solid W2 jobs and essentially no debt outside of our investment properties, so once her credit score is about on par with mine, would our improved DTI when applying for loans together enable us to get better lending terms to the degree that it still might be worthwhile to purchase 10 properties together instead of 20 properties individually? Not sure how much worse the lending terms are through commercial lenders (or other avenues) since I've only really looked into traditional mortgages to date.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback!

[Chris Mason]

Individually. You explained why in your OP. :)