Creative Financing ideas wanted to save my deal!

[Ian MacLeod]

I am in negotiation to purchase a package of 5 single family residences from an individual owner. She owners the properties clear title. She is asking 299k for them and frankly I think she wants out. Being a landlord is not her thing. I believe the properties will appraise for 350K in total. We have 30K cash we can put into the deal and she will carry 40K as a second (7% interest amortized over 9yrs but a 5 year balloon payment). So, we need a first of 229K. As we are from out of country we are only able to get a first for 65% LTV ($195K). Obviously when you add up our down payment of 30K, first mortgage of 195K and seller 2nd mortgage of 30K you can see that we are 34K short of the 299K total price. Can anyone think of a creative (and legal) way to structure this deal so that we don't need to come up with additional funds. (Will the lender use 299K (purchase price) or 350K (Appraised value) as the lending value?). If they will lend on the appraised value and not the purchase price then our problem is solved. 65% of 350K would be 227,500. This would put us short by only $1500 which we could put together. Also, as a point of interest we will be buying under the name of our LLC. We do own two other rentals but they are already leveraged at approximately 65% LTV so there is not really any equity we can get out of them to use for this purchase. Any thoughts/ideas on a structure for this.

Thanks

Ian