Qualifying for a 2nd rental property loan

[Peter Tonsits]

Hello,

Me and my business partner bought our first property in 2019. We are currently renting that property out to tenants and my business partner lives in it as well.

We are trying to purchase a 2nd property however a local credit union bank is saying that we cannot count a primary residence (considered primary residence because my business partner lives in it) as rental income even-though we have been collecting rent for almost a year. Now our mortgage is counting against us in our debt to income ratio with nothing to off-set it. Due to this we are unable to qualify for a large enough mortgage.

Question 1: is this pretty standard across the industry or should we keep looking and see if other banks would consider this rental income as income?

Question 2: if there is no way around this does anyone have any suggestions for alternative routes?

Thank you in advance for your responses :)