Help! In need of financing strategy ideas

[Jason Boulter]

Hello everyone, I have a long and complicated problem. Here is the basics: I'm in the process of closing on an investment property with a friend of mine in Columbus, OH, and we attempted to use conventional lending. My friend has the lower credit score of the two of us (645-650), but he also has the only income that can be counted for loan purposes since I'm a part time intern with less than two years of history. His income is significant enough, and our Debt to income ratio is low enough that we shouldn't have any problem there. We had planned to use a gift from my father for about 1/3 of the downpayment of 20 percent and closing costs, but our lender only discovered that this was an issue for investment properties after we entered the closing process. We do not have any assets to take a secured loan against for the downpayment except for a wedding ring appraised at $14k. We have an LLC formed, but we were planning to purchase the property in our own names. We tried to see whether we could sell part of the LLC to my father so that his money was not considered a gift, but they shot that idea down. We may be open to short term financing and then refinancing out later, but we wouldn't want to pay some ridiculous interest rate, or have the loan be for too short of a time frame in order to do so. We currently have 30 days left to close, so whatever we do needs to be quick. I'm looking for recommendations for a lender, or just strategic ideas of how we could continue to use the conventional lender that we have. Any help would be greatly appreciated.