Financing advice for future FHA first time home buyer "house hack" purchase.

[Ciro Affronti]

Hello BP!

Wanted to get some feedback or ideas from past experience from people who have done an FHA first time home buyer loan to purchase a residential multi family (looking into triplexes and quad's). I'm experienced and have a long family background in RE investing and purchased a few properties this year, so this isn't all new to me.

My plan is to buy a triplex or quad next year and use the FHA first time home buyer loan to pick up the property. I'd live in one of the units for a year, buy the property distressed but in an appreciating area that I like, and build value into it (I'm a partner in a general contracting company so I can get pretty creative with renovations for cheap).

My complication is that since I'm an entrepreneur/ partner in a family business all my income comes from 1099 and capital gains. I know this is difficult for getting financing and lenders I've spoken to in Arizona where I am located don't want to lend unless you have at least two years of 1099 returns to show. Since I'm a small business owner however I have a lot of tax write offs and accounting methods that enables me to show a very low income that wouldn't qualify me for traditional financing (I would have cash reserves to cover a mortgage and expenses for extended periods of time if need be). Has anybody encountered this situation and found a solution to this? Are there lenders who will lend based on the property itself and it's revenue producing potential and my experience/partners in real estate who back me? I was thinking if I identified properties I was interested in, and came prepared to a lender with all the data on the purchase, APOD, cash flow models, and examples of my past work they might consider than and lend based off of that. Has this worked for anyone or  have you found a similar strategy that was successful?

Thanks for your input.