New to BP and looking to House Hack with a VA loan

[Dylan Campo]

Hello BP,

A few months ago, my wife and I bought a single family home in San Diego using a VA loan. After discovering BP, I'm hooked on the idea of house hacking and want to rent out my current property and purchase a multi family. Unfortunately I run into some challenges doing so with the VA loan right off the bat.

With the VA loan, it has to be my primary residence so I'd have to refinance my current VA loan into a conventional in order to obtain full eligibility to be able to get another residence in the SoCal market. That being said, I do not have 20% equity in the home so we would get hit with adtl. expenses like PMI (and higher rates I'd assume?) when we refinance.

I'm trying to find a solution where I can keep my current property and rent it out while obtaining a multi family with a VA loan. The only answer I see is to make improvements on my current home to increase the value and sell it off to gain my full VA eligibility back.

Is there a better solution? Is there something I'm not seeing here?

Thanks!