BRRRR refinance after lease signed but before tenant moves in?

[Justin Misner]

Hello BP Community! My business partner, @Justin Stuardi, and I are in the planning process to purchase our first investment property with the intentions of making it our first of many BRRRR properties for our new portfolio. We have been listening to BP podcasts for some time now and are finally members of the community. Our understanding is that the best time to refinance is after renovations are done and we have a tenant renting our space. At the same time, we believe that the best results for our appraisal will be with a clean and organized home and that is never guaranteed with tenants. Has anyone ever tried to get the refinance going quickly and able to get the appraisal done before the tenants moved in? We understand that this may only work if tenants signed a lease to move in more than a month or so from the time of signing the lease so that the refi process has time but we wanted to see possible scenarios and how anyone else has handled this process.

For more context, our potential purchase will likely be seller financed in addition to a private friends/family type of loan so we won't be hamstrung of needing the initial loans to season before the refi (assuming that our refinance lender doesn't have that requirement). Neither the seller providing financing nor the private lender will have a pre-payment penalty which also incentivizes us to get the refinance done quickly. We plan on speaking with conventional lenders for the refinance before making our purchase so we that they know our plans and we can coordinate the timeline with them. Just wanted to know if anyone else has handled a BRRRR this way and if there are any helpful tips for that part of the process.

We appreciate any feedback, stories, tips, etc. that you all provide. We also look forward to sharing the perspective deal details once all of our repair estimates are together and we have our offer number ready to see what the community thinks of the deal outlook. The BP community has already helped us in a huge way by way of the great forums, podcasts, tools, etc. Thank you in advance for your feedback and advice!