How would you finance this deal?

[Aubrey H.]

A little background. We have purchased a small city block that has one duplex on it. The rent income will cover the mortgage on the property so at this time we dont plan on putting the cost of the land in our new budget. We also plan on being our contractor so we understand we will be doing extra work/time and hopefully do some of the work on our own. We would like to develop this land (depending on what our city will let us do). So throwing a few ideas around for how to finance here are a few thing we have thought about. 1.) Get a traditional new construction loan. The problem we see here is being able to get this type of financing we are getting very close to the debt to income limits and dont have enough tax returns (experience) to work with some banks in the area. 2.) Get family and friends to invest or loan us the money as needed. We fear with this that we will have family that wants to be more then a silent partner and not sure we want to open that door. 3.) We have also thought about taking advantage of some of the credit card deals that have 0% for 6-48 months. After we get tenants in (for the income) or at the end of the promotion time we could refinance the new property to pay off the cards. The downfall here is that it would not help our dept to income if another deal presents itself in the near future. What would you do? Or do you have other ideas?