Creative finance question

[Nicholas W.]

I'm all about the creative finance idea and have been doing a ton of research on it lately. I have a decent amount of equity in my house that I can tap for a down payment on a multi-family (ideally a 4 family). I have questions about making the offer. With a primary residence transaction the offer is contingent upon preferred financing terms and an inspection and you typically put in an offer right away contingent upon doing your due diligence but I can't see an owner accepting an offer contingent upon me coming up with 100% financing at the drop of a hat.

When you plan to use creative finance, HELOC, cash-out refi or private investor how is offer structured? What if I don't get as big of a cash-out as I thought or my private investor has an issue with the deal for whatever reason? I plan to do the cash-out refi prior to putting an offer in, but just asking hypothetically how these transactions work.

Do you get the previous years operating statement of the building before the offer or is that typically only disclosed after an offer is made? I keep reading about a LOI, letter of intent, what exactly is that and how does it fit into the process? I guess I'm just wanting to know more about the typical start to finish process on purchasing a smaller multi-family.

Thanks in advance for any guidance!