Need Help: Qualifying for Conv. Mortgage with rental income

[Keith Miller]

Hello,

I'm running into issues with qualifying for a conventional mortgage to buy another owner occupied house here in Missoula MT, to build another backyard ADU, this strategy works great here. I'm hoping you can help me figure out how to qualify for a larger conventional mortgage, right now I can only qualify for about $450K with 5% down, which is my goal.

I work as a teacher, so I have $60K of income from that. I also have three leases bringing in a total of $5,800, balanced by only $4K of mortgages between the two properties. In addition, I can get another $2,500 from leasing my current house once we move out. So there's plenty of cash flow, but my mortgage broker is telling me that there is an issue because I was recently running those houses as Airbnbs. I was writing off all of the materials I used while adding sweat equity, so it made my tax returns look poor. As a result, he's saying he can't use any income from these properties, because it's not reflected in my tax return. All he can do is "zero out" the mortgages, which means I can only use my income  from teaching to qualify for a mortgage. 

Does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives? I'd like to do a 5% down conventional mortgage, so I can save my money for building the ADU.

I'm wondering if there are any banks that keep their owner occupied mortgages in house, so I could sidestep some of these regulations? 

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!