Is it possible to force the value of my home?

[Evan Kline]

My wife and I are just starting out in real estate.

We bought out first home in May (which we live in currently), my wife purchased with 3.75% down, first time home buyer perks, etc. and it's only in her name (intentionally, in NC so we don't have those weird community property rules)

I'm negotiating our second house deal- a duplex we're planning on moving into to "house hack" while we rent out our first house.  (We were married after we purchased the home so we have a significant life event to justify leaving the owner occupancy earlier than one year)

The second home we'll be able to purchase with 5% down (off market, owner financed deal, no agents, etc. hopefully I'll be posting in the success stories soon!)

So here's the question. In an ideal BRRR strat, we'll get this through owner financing, refinance through a bank, and hope to get a good appraisal where the 75-80% refi will get us cash back. The problem is this house could appraise anywhere from $170-250k possibly as high as $300 depending on the level of rehab we do. I put in an offer for $150k I'm confident about. But I'll need the home to appraise in the low to mid 200 range to get my money back out to move on to the next deal. And I'm sure the bank will try and hit the low end of appraisal.

BUT WHAT IF: My wife (and she's on board with this, by the way), 'buys' the house with the owner financing, again in her name only. We move into one unit of the new house (which is actually bigger than our current house so we're not even downsizing). THEN. She 'sells' me the house. AND, since my name isn't on our first home, I can tap into the first time home buyer perks, only put down 3.75% which is LESS than we put down initially, AND we can set or 'force' the value of the home anywhere in that spectrum (within reason, certainly, but without the fear of a conservative appraisal)- possibly pulling out enough for multiple down payments. 

Thoughts? Is there a catch somewhere I'm missing?