Growing portfolio with potential for personal home

[Josh Clinard]

I have a question for you guys, hopefully i can get some good feedback. My  wife and I have our first buy and hold that is cash flowing very well and we believe we have around 30-40k in equity. We have owned the home for about a year and have had it rented for about 5 months. We currently live at home with my in-laws, which is awesome for saving but we are 23 and know we need our own space. We plan on moving out within the next year. That brings me to my question.

I would like to grow our portfolio while living at home due to what we save monthly and the equity we have available in our rental. However, I am worried that purchasing more investments will kill our debt to income and not allow us to qualify for a personal mortgage. All of the lenders I have spoken with want to see 2 W2's with rental proof. We obviously wont have that when the time comes for a personal home. Did we put ourselves in a tough situation by buying investments before a personal home? Is there an option that I am overlooking? We would prefer to use leverage in our deals to keep as much money in our pockets as possible. Cash deals may be an option, I just dont feel like we have the right people/team to help us find deals in our range so we could pay cash.

So how do people do it? How are people leveraging alot of deals and still maintaining a good relationship with banks to get financing. There are a few SFR that i would love to go see right now, we just dont want to commit and then not be able to get a personal home within the next year. Please let me know, all feedback is greatly appreciated!