Young, Tiny Income but Great Credit and Chunk of Cash

[Brian R.]

Hi everyone,

My name is Brian, this is my first post here and day one as a Bigger Pockets member. Happy to be joining you all!

The Issue: I want to buy real estate leveraging OPM but have no suitable income to satisfy a lender.

The Goal: Purchase cash flowing real estate without ever needing to get a full time salaried job.

Where I'm at now: I am twenty three years old, just out of college and am supporting myself with different jobs [mostly hired on an independent contractor] and paid hourly. I am looking around upstate New York [Rochester mostly, but Buffalo and Syracuse as well] to purchase a cash flowing property, open to both SFHs and MFHs. I feel confident in my ability to "run the numbers" accounting for things like Management, Vacancies, PITI, Reserve Fund, as well as maintenance.

My issue and question has to do with financing and starting to build my RE investment portfolio. The price range of properties I am looking at are between 25k-40k. I am in the position to pay cash for one property in this price range but realize that wouldn't allow my money to be working as hard as it could compared to leveraging the bank's/lender's money.

The Question: To those creative and experienced out there, I feel there might be a solution to my goals in buying my first investment property in cash. After that, I would 1] start having the cash flow as income [albeit minimal] to show to lenders in the future and 2] I would be able to help finance my next investment buy taking a home equity line of credit from the property I purchased in cash.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to being able to contribute back to this community here at Bigger Pockets!

-Brian