Cosigner on FHA Duplex

[Nick Causa]

Hey all, we're just moving out of my house and decided to rent it out bc its too far from our newly relocated jobs (lots of questions to come on that in later posts im sure). My wife and i originally decided to rent an apartment very close to work but i cant help but realize how the amount of money that goes towards rent could potentially go towards building equity in a another property. Since we havent rented our place out before, the mortgage still counts towards our debt even though we'll have someone rent it so another single family is out of the question. We were however approved for 200k but houses near our job are way more $ than that. As a result we decided to look into an FHA duplex because the potential rental income on an FHA duplex counts towards income. My wife and i were now pre-approved for 400k which is 135k under the price of a house we were looking at that is close to our jobs. Long story short: My mother wants to get in on real estate and offered to cosign to help us qualify. How do any of the profits or equity get split if im approved for 400k and we needed someone else to cosign to help us meet the 539k purchase price? Has anyone ever done this? By the way, these are the joys of living in New York and still trying to make it work!