Financing Question - New REI

[Steven McLarty]

Hello. We are new to active Real estate investing. I recently left the aerospace industry after 29 years and my wife closed her ladies boutique. We are now embarking on our new chapter and want to actively invest in REI. We have had two single family rentals for many years but have only passively involved ourselves in those properties. However, one of these properties is paid off. Now that we are "self-employed" we are not receiving positive feedback to our efforts to finance new properties. Our LLC is only a month old so we do not have a history. But we do have cash and will be buying another rental within the week without financing. We would like to leverage the paid off property for financing additional properties. Any advise how to approach this with mortgage companies or banks?

Input is appreciated.