Buying primary home after retirement and owning rental property

[John Larson]

I plan on retiring early and moving to a cheaper state in ~3 years.  Our plan is to move into a rental home in the new state, sell previous home, and eventually buy a new home in the new state.

Between now and then I plan on buying some multifamily RE and am concerned with getting a good rate with the mortgage on the next primary home in the new state because 1.  I’ll have debt in the multifamily rentals and 2. we’ll have much lower income (wife will work and we’ll some hove retirement income).  If I kept my current salary when buying the next primary home, this wouldn’t be a problem but my employer won’t allow the remote work and I would prefer to stop working for money at that time.

Questions:

1.  Say I invest now in only commercial properties using loans.  Do commercial loans affect my income to debt ratio?

2. Would owning CRE or non-commercial RE using a trust or LLC be beneficial to my situation knowing I want to get a good rate as much as I can for the primary home mortgage?

3.  How can I estimate my income once I am retired in much the same way a mortgage lender would?  Currently all of my investments are in the stock market but I plan on buying some RE in the next 6 months or so.

If anyone has advice to do these events in a different order to achieve my goal, I’m happy to read what you have to say.