Different Financing Options for First Time Buyers

[Justin Tee]

My friend and I have been looking for a property to buy, improve with ADUs, and rent as owner occupied in one unit. We found pretty much exactly what we were looking for recently, however our private lender had to back out for unrelated reasons. He was going to front a deposit of $250k. 

I'm a veteran and full time graduate student with about $50k net annual income and my friend (not military) grosses about $175k per year income. I qualify for a VA loan, he does not. Neither of us have any debt whatsoever, both 750+ credit scores. He can do all the building improvements through his work as a general contractor and estimates completion of 2 ADUs within 5-7 months including permits, at which point we can reasonably expect to be cash flowing $1.5k monthly.

We are wondering if there's any course of action for us that could salvage our pursuit of this property with our reduced ability to make an up front payment. Between us both we can scrape together $150k. We're still quite new and eager to learn, but the financing industry is something we are slowly figuring out. 

Can we each get approved for our own financing for the same property? Any other clever ideas we might want to consider? 

Thanks for any help!