What would you do in our shoes?

[Wilfred Kolkman]

I'll try to keep this short, my wife and I bought our first home(parent co-borrower since I'm self employed) in August 2020 in Dallas TX. Bought for $247k, current value is around $325k+. My wife goes to school and I moved my residential painting company down here. We just finished paying off $25k credit card debt, we have one auto loan, student loans and the mortgage. My income from painting is great we have $20k saved. My question is how could someone in my position find a lender for a single family or small multifamily property when I don't have a "valid" proof of income? I've been thinking hard money lenders, but am unsure and hope to get some good feedback from this forum. We've been running numbers through the rental calculator, getting used to analyzing the numbers and trying to find good deals to get practice with that. We are doing everything we can to be proactive and set goals to move forward consistently and learn as much as possible. My wife and I are motivated and excited to be real estate investors. What would you do if you were in our shoes? Thank you for spending the time to read this. 

[Kevin Sobilo]

@Wilfred Kolkman, these lenders could be talking about a couple different kinds of loans. Conventional fannie/freddie loans or portfolio loans.

Conventional fannie/freddie loans will be resold by the lender and need to conform to strict rules. However, the loan officer you talk to often doesn't know all the rules intimately. Talk to a lender and ask them to talk to an underwriter to see if you really need to wait 2 years. I suspect there are some possibilities they have not explored. It may depend on if your income now is similar to what it was before.

I would also talk to small banks and credit unions about portfolio loans. These are loans the bank will keep. So, they can use any criteria they want. You may need to talk to their commercial lending people because often they are the only ones who deal with portfolio loans (although this varies from bank to bank). They don't have to follow any strict criteria and can make their decision on the full picture of you as a borrower.