What's the secret to three-peat?

[Dustin Graham]

Howdy,

Been running a lot of numbers in the past few days. I found some advice that the back-end debt-to-income ratio should be under 36% for lenders to be happy. (Some mentioned 45%.) Great!

I figured out a way to do that, buy a second property, and rent out my first. Right at 36%. Then after some time the rental income would add to my income, and DTI becomes something like 30%. Great!

Then I had an ah-ha moment. Can I do it a third time? Attempting the exact same deal would put my DTI to 40%. D'oh.

Of course extrapolating that makes sense. If I had 50 of these, with the 50% rule (unrealistic in California, but assume.) The DTI would gravitate towards 50%.

So my question is. Adding rental income to mine, how do we get numbers to work for the mortgage lenders to be happy with the third property? And fourth, fifth, sixth?

Thanks,

-Dustin