Refinancing Question - Primary and Rental Properties - Wife Only?

[Sean Kelley]

Hi All-

I'm looking for some advice on refinancing. My wife and I both own two homes, our primary and a rental home we used to live in.

I left my job earlier this year and have a large chunk of savings I intend to use for real estate investing, looking to start doing it full time. My wife is still working full time. In the meantime we want to be taking advantage of the great rates for existing mortgages. 

We just recently refinanced our primary home and were advised to only put my wife on the loan (since she is the one currently employed and by adding myself we weren't gaining anything.)

Now we are looking at refinancing our rental property. Does it also make sense to have my wife be the only one on the loan?

Since these home loans are typically based on debt-to-income and I am not currently employed, I'm not sure the best course of action. It would definitely free up debt if just my wife was on the refinance loan (we are both currently on the rental property loan) but I'm not sure how this will affect us in the future. 

For example if in a few months I find some good properties I want to invest in... Would it be better for myself to have no mortgages and just have them in my wife's name? We are open to having one or both of us on current and future mortgages, just not sure the best way to do this.

Thanks for any advice and thoughts.