Financing duplex and single family conundrum

[Chris May]

Ok BP, I need your help.

We're currently owner occupying a unit in our duplex in Oakland and looking at relocating to a lower cost of living area on the east coast. We're going to keep the duplex and rent it out, but are running into financing obstacles.

Obstacles are:

* Probably moving from double to single income household

* Reserve requirements on the duplex in order to qualify for a mortgage on the new home

* Maxed out on a HELOC against the duplex following a major renovation

* FNMA requirements such as only counting 75% of rents on the duplex for income qualification on new home

* Could maybe do a cash out refinance on the duplex, but we have an amazing interest rate and would have to refinance into an investment loan with high rate--doesn't sound appealing.

From an income perspective we can comfortably cover payments on a new $300k home but finding a conventional mortgage solution That involves keeping our duplex has us running into a lot of brick walls. The duplex would cash flow slightly once fully rented, but all the requirements on FNMA loans make our financial picture look much worse than it really is.

So.. Anyone have any thoughts for clever solutions here? Are there private lending options that don't have exorbitant rates? I feel like this must be a fairly common problem and there should be an obvious solution but I'm not seeing it.

Not interested in a bunch of "call me and see what we can do" type responses.

Thanks in advance everyone!