Obtaining Finance as a Foreign Investor

[James Hutchinson]

Hello all,

I am new to this forum but am eager to get some useful information from people who may have experienced similar situations.

Basically, my business partner and I started an LLC based in Florida (both of us are Australian citizens), and we purchased a property in cash in the Fort Myers area. Things are going great with the property and we are making a solid return and we would like to increase our property portfolio in the area.

Since it is difficult to save up enough cash to buy a property outright every time (our first property was $50,000), we are hoping to be able to obtain finance for a property and provide a deposit. I must stress that if we could obtain finance, we would not be looking at properties around the $50,000 mark, and we would tend to go for $150,000+ market. I understand financial institutions do not want to deal with small loans and this is understandable.

I have been asking around and most people have said it is next to impossible to get a loan from a US bank given the lack of credit rating and not living in the country, but I was seeing if there is an alternative. I know there are hard money lenders, but I am hesitant to do this as the interest repayments would simply be too high and it would defeat the purpose of looking for cash flow properties.

There are also Australian companies that provide finance for properties in the US, but again the interest rate is fairly inflated, typically around 8.00% and over so again it is not really worth it for us.

Anyone have any ideas on how we can get around this hurdle?

Thanks
James