FHA Loan for Primary as a Real Estate Investor

[David Qian]

Hi guys, first post here: 

Has anyone had any experience with obtaining an FHA Loan for their primary residence as a full time real estate professional? More specifically if you own multiple investment properties and they show up on your Schedule E do you need to provide detailed information on each of the properties/including lease agreements etc? - I'm a full time real estate investor with a few dozen multifamily properties with multiple units each so there are over a hundred tenants. I have never gotten a residential loan before, all the mortgages I currently have on the multifamily properties are commercial loans.

Going through the FHA process has been a headache for me because the underwriter is asking for a lot of information for each of the properties including the signed lease agreements for all tenants. There are hundreds of pages of leases as we have over a hundred tenants. I'm going through the FHA process because this is a loan assumption and able to get a very favorable rate.

I'm wondering if anyone has gone through this process being a pure real estate investor (no W2 or other income) and how they would handle this situation. Is there a better way then compiling so much information? Additionally I've been reading there are compensating factors for FHA loans, I'm wondering if I can show more liquid assets (already putting 20% down for this purchase) so I could get a faster approval without all the other detailed information such as leases.

Thank you in advance,

~David

[Carlos Valencia]

Hello David, 

if you are putting 20% down already why not use conventional instead of FHA? On conventional you can put down as low as 5%-20% down if you want. Many sellers also prefer conventional offers as opposed to FHA due to the less strict guidelines when it comes to FHA offers. FHA has a few more disclosures. Based on your scenario I dont see why you would not qualify to use FHA since it doesn't appear you already have an FHA loan so the self sufficiency doesn't apply amongst others. As long as you qualify based on income I see no other roadblock.

@Albert Bui @Matthew Kwan