Down payment challenges

[Duncan Banks]

Happy Friday pocket people.

I live south of Boston, earn a good salary and am looking to buy an investment property but am struggling on how to come up with a down payment. I've owned my home for a little over a year and have added substantial value, did 90% of the work myself to keep down cost, but still depleted my savings substantially. I looked into taking value from my home but was told between the VA only cashing out up to 90% and the VA charging 3.3 it would be fairly expensive for a small return. Quick summary if I added 55k in value to my home I'd put 14k in my pocket just to be charged 10k (added to my loan). If I were to try and save for a 300k down payment Id have to put $1154 aside every week just to be ready to buy in a year. All numbers rounded with 0 savings for simplicity.

Is the first investment home the hardest?  What are people doing to get past this substantial obstacle?  Besides a 10% down payment on a vacation property what else is there?  I could be wrong but hard money seems like a no go on anything but a flip.  I dont have wealthy friends or family.  Somebody throw me a life line.