Just getting started...

[Amanda Nawrocki]

Hello!

My name is Amanda and my husband are are getting started in this exciting biz! I’ve got a few questions! I apologize in advance, this is long so thank you for reading to the end if you do.  

Our current home is a VA loan. It was under contract last year to sell and appraised for about $100k over what we currently owe. Life happened and we took it off the market. Now we've reevaluated and have decided to rent and take the equity out for a down payment on a new house, but from what I'm reading there's many different ways to do this.

Should we do a VA cash out refinance or regular if we've already paid more than the 20% down? Can it even be changed in the process to a conventional loan and use the VA on the new house? We had 20% down when we bought originally so we wouldn't have had to pay PMI, but the rates were lower at that time so we used it anyway. Is there any additional reason to use the VA to purchase the new other than to avoid the PMI?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been reading a ton in a short amount of time and am trying to keep my information straight. I think we should do a cash out refi to a conventional loan, take the $80k(equity is worth $100k, but I understand most banks use the 80/20 rule so going with that for now), purchase a second rental property and use what is needed from the $80k, and also purchase our new home using the VA loan in case we don't have 20% for the down payment to avoid the PMI. Is that even all possible? We have excellent credit, my biggest concern is my husband was furloughed for 6 months, but ended up getting back payed so on paper it really looks like only 2 and I was out on maternity for 3 months at the same time. Now he's working full time and I'm only back part time. Will we even get approved for the refinance without the stable incomes since it is all so fresh in our history? I also read somewhere in these forums it may not look good to take a cash out for the down payment and it would be smarter to take the money from somewhere else if possible, which we could do, it would just eat up most of our assents. Any and all opinions are tips are appreciated! Thanks for reading all the way through if you made it!

Amanda N.