Need help in my situation

[Yannick Laurent]

Hi BP community, 

I'm currently in the process of my first deal and I need help to figure out what to do in my situation. I'm a college student and I have no steady income. Because of that, financing is tricky for me. My dad says he needs to learn more about real estate investing before he could cosign and I would need to wait for 1-2 years easily. I don' t want to wait 2 years to get started. I already contacted an agent, loan broker and my team is partly set up. I am ready to buy a small multi-family, but I am stuck in a place where I have couple of choices. Either wait for my dad, get a partner for residential multi-family, or get in commercial multi-family with no prior experience. In the case of getting a partner, I have no idea how to approach the conversation of cosigning my deal. Should I give equity in exchange? or should I give any money at all? How can I approach that subject to someone I know without making it uncomfortable? In the case of getting into commercial, it would solve my problems because in Canada, banks run their numbers from what the propriety generates in income and not from what I earn as personal income.

I personally tend to believe commercial would be the best option. I have so many possibilities if I choose that path and my lack of income wouldn't be an issue anymore. However, I don't know how risky it'd be to do that with no prior experience in real estate.