All Forum Posts by: Erin Estes

Thank you so much! This helps tremendously! I had heard that it takes two years of seasoning before rental income would count toward mortgage qualifying, but it looks like I need to investigate that more! It looks like I have more options than I originally thought :) 70% would be enough, I think for us to make it work. Maybe I could get a new VA with property B and get a conventional refi with property A if they'd consider rental income. Thanks for the response!

Ok, that's good information!! So, instead, what if we were to take out a new VA on property B and then take out a hard money loan on property A until it's seasoned enough to get conventional financing?

"Property A" is my single family home that my family lives in. We bought it HUD owned in January 2013 with a VA and it has a 3.125% interest rate. It's also got about $60,000 +/- worth of equity in it. I could rent it for $1,400 and our piti mortgage is just over $1,000. 4/3, 3 car, 2446 sqft.
"Property B" is our subject property we'd like to purchase.  It is currently a short sale at $350,000 but with the work it needs it'll probably go for around $320,000 or less or go through foreclosure before the bank will be willing to sell it at that price.  5/3.5, 2.5 car, 3673 sqft.

What I'd like to do is purchase property B, maybe with an interest-only two year loan from a hard money lender (or some other hard money loan) and rent out property A. Then, when property A is seasoned and I have two year's landlording experience under my belt (so the banks will count my rental income as income to back a mortgage), refinance property A with new long-term financing and refinance property B with a VA loan (or whichever loan would give me the best interest rate). Could I, should I, use a blanket loan? What would my options be to pull this off? What other types of mortgages could I use in this scenario? Also, at what point could I/should I transfer property A into my LLC? Is that even legal? How would I go about doing this? My goal is to keep property A as a rental in my LLC while "moving up" to another good deal personally. My exit strategy for property B would be to sell (eventually), not to hold and rent, because it wouldn't have a large enough tenant pool since it is so big and higher priced... the demand for that type of house as a rental just isn't there.