Bridge loan or some orher ideas suggestions

[Steven Westlake]

I hoping some of you can point me in a new direction.

Heres the basic facts:

1. I stopped working my regular job about 2 years ago. Got my 35 plus years in engineering in, to draw full social security, in a few more years. I’m 57 yo and married, no kids still at home, if that matters. Our house and a fully rented triplex and all cars are paid off, and payments are only $366 mo on another triplex.

2. My credit score has faded from around 840 to 775 due to carrying a credit card balance of 22k.

3. I had been dealing the same bank for sometime and had spoken to them earlier this year about getting a loan to cover some remodeling i was working on. Assuming it would be business as usual. They were in the process of being taken over by another bank so there were several months of delays to figure out the new procedures. Meanwhile I’m racking up credit card debt figuring next month it’ll be done each month, the bank stuff, not the work. Then the loan guy then calls and says the new bank owners are no longer doing that type of loan. So I contact several other banks, and run into a newer problem, they all seem to be using a similar approach, which is to say a math formula. They now want the current rent income to cover 1.2 times expenses after they subtract $1500 plus all property taxes and insurance. The issue is they only count the current rent not the future rent or even last year’s taxes rent, from the 3 units I’m remodeling. Had i had this information up front, I could have done only one unit at a time. The remaining work will bump rent from $500 per unit to $750-900 per unit, times 3 units.

So how do you all deal with these issues? Bridge loan, if so where do get those? I only need like $10-12k per unit times 3 units, total includes the credit card.

metropolitan housing already has money approved to pay the rent. Should i keep going on the credit card figuring the rent will cover the payments, currently $622 mo? Or pull money from retirement and pay the early withdrawal penalty? If so this “income” will likely cause our health insurance to skyrocket.

I’m just in shock a bank won’t loan 30-40k on a paid off triplex.

I even listed it for sale with a bunch work not finished, thinking i could eliminate the banks all together and use the cash to build something else. But it is not getting any traction due to unfinished work needing done.