Mortgage Loan questions

[Michael Bieler]

Hey guys, so I am an active investor in Florida. I have a few questions regarding mortgage terms. My lender always MUST have 25% down for a duplex. 30% down for a tri or more. I feel like this is really slowing me down. If I was even able to do 15-20% down that would really help. Is this normal? Are their any good lenders out there who will take less down payment? 

[Chris Mason]

Quote from @Scott Wolf:

Quote from @Tanner Connelly:

I've seen these go for 3.5% down or even 5% down....sounds like whichever lender everyone is using has harsh guidelines. 

 You're seeing investment loans for those numbers? Because that sounds like owner-occupied to me.

FYI during the 2020/2021 refi boom, a lot of new people entered the mortgage industry, primarily to do refinances ("two week wonder school" type quick/down/dirty refi-only training programs), the demand for which had gone up over 500% for obvious reasons. 

Now that owner occ rates are in the 5s, and investment property right where you'd expect in relation, those refinances have all gone away, but the new loan officers are still around. But they're being forced to pivot to purchase business, which they've never really done before, and weren't trained to do during the "two week wonder school," because if they can't do that, then they have to go back to their old job, which they evidently didn't particularly enjoy. So you see them saying silly things about down payments, down payment gifts, timing, realtors, etc, because none of those things exist on refinances (that's the pattern, it's always something that would never come up on a refi, because these folks have in fact done hundreds of order-taker refinances, but that's basically all they've done). 

www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org is where you can view someone's mortgage license history, and self-stated employment history. You can usually find the NMLS number on someone's BP profile, and if not they're breaking the mortgage rules (in general licensed professionals have to have that number readily visible, be they realtors or mortgage professionals or plumbers). 

Here's what that website looks like:

And you plug in the NMLS number, and to use a completely random example of someone that might say silly things about down payment requirements for a rental property, things that if we didn't know better might look a lot like encouraging mortgage fraud (but I don't think that's the case, I think it's inexperience):

The point isn't to call anyone out, the point is that it falls on all of us, always, to do due diligence when evaluating things we read on the intertubes, regardless of where.