Need Advice DTI too high

[Nick K.]

So I was wanting some advice.

I'm very close to being ready to buy my first property for a rental.

I've been through 10 banks, finally I found one that gave me the time to day to at least have a discussion with me. He said everything looked fine at a glance and he was ok with the loan. Well apparently he looked harder at my numbers and my DTI ratio is 41%. Their cap is 40% total.

So here is my question....do I move on and continue down the line of asking banks? Do I look at seller financing? I know there are a ton of avenues. I was hoping to get my first property in the next few months to get the ball rolling.

I do not currently have anyone in my life that can help with the financial part of this. Plus with no track history of real estate it puts a little more of a damper on the idea for someone to help invest if I were to find a partner.

My main interest is in Multifamily homes, and buy and hold.

I have one real estate investor in my family, but it's by marriage and I've talked to him one time. I will see him at X-Mas and plan to see if he has any interest in letting me add value for him some how....haven't figured out what I can do for him yet, but hopefully he has a problem I can help solve.

Any suggestions? I will be working hard to reduce my DTI ratio going forward. I have school debt of $40k roughly, I owe $108k on my house, and $9k on my car, no other debts are in my name. I think I can take a good chunk out of those, but I feel like putting off trying to find a property for another year or two to reduce DTI is just an excuse, which I will not fall to. 

Also I did try searching DTI ratio topics on here but all I found was pepole trying to overcome too many rentals already in their name and trying to buy another one....so if anyone has this question/answer already posted I would love the link to read through it.

Thanks!