(VT) Building or buying a multi family with a JD mortgage

[Marc Webb]

Hi all,

By way of background, I am a young lawyer in Vermont and looking at getting into house hacking. The problem is that a lot of the multi family housing stock in the Chittenden county area where I live tends to be in rough shape and needs quite a bit of work. That said, there are some great builders here.

The question is if it makes sense for me to finance the construction of a tri/quadplex using a JD loan (usually 0% down, no PMI but a higher interest rate) or to buy an older unit and just be ready to put money into it. Thoughts?

I like the idea of using the JD loan as much as possible because 1) my DTI ratio is screwed because of my massive student loan debt (JD mortgages tend to overlook this) but I am slowly hacking away at it and hope the house hack will accelerate my pay down even more, and 2) I don't have to tie up a bunch of money in the down payment.

-Marc