All Forum Posts by: Benjamin Piecenski

Hey Stephen, are you looking to be on the loan as well with a cosigner?  Typically, the lower credit score of the two applicants is used to qualify, so a cosigner unfortunately does not override your credit. How maxed out are your credit cards?  I would venture to guess the main reason your credit score has fell so much is due to credit cards having a balance over 50% of the credit limit - it can be a huge killer to your credit score.

Hi, @Charles Day!  You've picked a great area to start investing in.  Austin is correct on using the potential rental income to qualify for the loan - it's a great tool to use when debt to income ratios are tight.  Let me know if you have any questions about the area or financing!

Welcome!  You've picked a great area, if you ever have questions about specific parts of town (born and raised here) or any financing questions, I'd be more than glad to help.

Paging @Caroline Hardin

Hello!  Have you looked into hard money?  That's the best route to be able to move quickly with financing.  The traditional mortgage process (at least at my firm) takes about 21-30 days, but hard money allows you to move quickly.  They may look at your credit score, but they take a lot more consideration into seeing if the numbers work with the property.

Hi, Scott!  First, I would consider your risk tolerance and your mentality about investing.  Does leverage and debt keep you up at night, or do you sleep like a baby?  With how rates are currently, I see little to no benefit to shortening the loan term from 30 years.  With how low interest these rates are, it makes more sense numbers-wise to stretch out loan terms as long as possible and invest any additional funds instead of using them to pay down the loan.  If the idea of a 30 year mortgage gets you a bit queasy, I'd look into using a 20 year mortgage to run the numbers.  In this market, it would be very tough to find properties that cash flow well when financing was obtained through a 15 year mortgage.  Let em know if you have any other curiosities!

@Larry Turowski I disagree, there were definitely respectable areas that were hit hard enough to warrant a 5 out of 9 vacancy rate with a bit of bad luck.  I'd also argue that nicer areas were impacted a lot more that "war zones"

Hi @Don Johnson!  This is not an uncommon issue at all.  Credit Karma and other free online credit monitoring websites use a very basic scoring model that is frequently inaccurate and doesn't correctly account for derogatory items.  The reason to this is that the report using the scoring models by the credit bureaus is very expensive, so Credit Karma doesn't have access to the same scoring models that credit bureaus use and lenders will see.  Credit Karma is great for monitoring your credit and making sure there aren't any new, fraudulent accounts being opened, but their scores that they give you are almost never accurate.  I've seen 100 point spread before between actual score and what Credit Karma says

While this may be true for a full service bank that has depository accounts, this is not the case with most mortgage-specific banks.  For us, it simply isn't even taken into consideration if you're in Columbus or Cambodia (provided they have the citizenship/requirements to access the US banking system), it just matters if you are able to qualify credit and income-wise.

Hi @Jordan Michaud!  I'd love to take a second look.  We have no issues with you being out of state, in fact most of the investment properties I've done are with out of state investors.  I think my rates would surprise you too, the investors who have shopped me with other banks/brokers have always told me I'm a good bit lower than what others are quoting.