There is a burned out shell of a building located on a main street near our home. The property in question has commercial space on the ground floor with two, 2 bed/1 bath units above. There street has a majority of mixed use buildings. Years ago it was a thriving commercial retail area, but has since fallen into disrepair. There is active development happening on the street, which is a great sign. Multiple residential rental projects have recently completed on the street with others either in progress or about to break ground. Density is coming to the area which will bring foot traffic and potential consumers to make the commercial spaces on the ground floor worth owning. Currently a majority of the existing mixed use buildings have the commercial space shuttered with the owners just biding their time until the real estate prices make sense for them to rent out or sell - or they are just asking way too much in rents for any businesses to survive for very long. There have been lots of stop and starts with businesses opening for a few months to a year only to close due to rents being too high and not enough people to patronize the shops.

My wife an I have been in contact with the agent representing the property owner. They have a current cash offer in on the property that has not yet been accepted. My wife and I would like to purchase the property and renovate to eventually run a shop out of the commercial space and rent out the rental units above. We don't have the money to put down a cash offer and are assuming that a bank won't want to provide a mortgage on a distressed property. We are both 1099 employees and don't have the bank statements or tax returns to get a mortgage anyway. We would likely need to rely on a DSCR loan. Our issue would be getting down payment assistance - we don't know how to get started with that. We have reached out to the city and they have provided some information about grants but that seems extremely complex without much chance for success as we would be first timers.

My question is what options are out there to help with this situation. We are home owners and have been in the community for 10 years now. We want to help our neighborhood by renovating a distressed property in the hopes of giving others the inspiration to do the same. Unfortunately we are carrying a lot of debt from our last real estate purchase. We had to do a DSCR loan for a short term rental we purchased out of state. That property is making us money, but not enough to offset the debt we went into to purchase the property. We are almost 4 years into that property and we won't be able to refi or pull any equity out of the house until our 6th year due to mortgage restrictions. We would like to avoid putting our primary residence on the line for this. Are there programs to look into either state wide (NJ) or nationally that will help with down payment assistance or a construction loan? We are happy to act as our own GC as we don't have the resources to pay for a GC who would charge 20-30% to do the job.

Thanks in advance for your help and or ideas.

Jersey City, New Jersey

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