All Forum Posts by: Jennifer Bailey

@Brad Hammond - Good point that they average it so it likely won't have to be 24 months exactly. If we have to wait another year it wouldn't be the worse considering people are over bidding for houses right now and that's not ideal. 

@Dustin Allen - Totally agree and thanks for pointing that out because that's exactly how we landed our first home. I kept calling lender after lender until I found one who had a program that saved us a ton of money without all the red tape from bigger banks. For now, I'm trying to gather as much info as I can so I can go into the conversations with what has worked for others as a base line. 

Appreciate the feedback!

Hi All,

My husband and I bought a home in Surfside, Texas last year which is a popular tourist town and Air B&B hot spot.

We purchased the home using an owner occupancy loan and are currently living here. Our plan is to start renting it once we hit our 1 year commitment in a few months.

My question is.. What is the best route to go about buying a second home to do the same thing and how to offset our mortgage towards our DTI? Basically, purchase a new home then STR this one, rinse and repeat.

The one lender I spoke to said we need a 1 year lease signed to off-set the DTI. This will not work as we plan to do STR.

I've read that some lenders will allow you to go off a percentage of the appraisal amount with out having a signed lease. I understand the risk, however homes in this area earn $30-$50k a year just on Air B&B income and we do have good amount of savings to show.

After the DTI issue comes the down payment:

We are trying to avoid a huge down payment so if we could do another owner-occupancy loan for 1 year that would be ideal. Can we do another owner occupancy loan in the same area?

Other option would be to buy a second home with 10% down. Then we would basically STR our current home, find an apartment back in the city, and STR here and there, considering we woulnd't need to wait 1 year. And yes, I know we still need to occupy it for a portion of the year.

Any suggestions would be helpful!

Hi All, 

My husband and I bought a home in Surfside, Texas last year which is a popular tourist town and Air B&B hot spot. 

We purchased the home using an owner occupancy loan and are currently living here. Our plan is to start renting it once we hit our 1 year commitment in a few months.

My question is.. What is the best route to go about buying a second home to do the same thing and how to offset our mortgage towards our DTI? Basically, purchase a new home then STR this one, rinse and repeat.

The one lender I spoke to said we need a 1 year lease signed to off-set the DTI. This will not work as we plan to do STR.

I've read that some lenders will allow you to go off a percentage of the appraisal amount with out having a signed lease. I understand the risk, however homes in this area earn $30-$50k a year just on Air B&B income and we do have good amount of savings to show.

After the DTI issue comes the down payment:

We are trying to avoid a huge down payment so if we could do another owner-occupancy loan for 1 year that would be ideal. Can we do another owner occupancy loan in the same area? 

Other option would be to buy a second home with 10% down. Then we would basically STR our current home, find an apartment back in the city, and STR here and there, considering we woulnd't need to wait 1 year. And yes, I know we still need to occupy it for a portion of the year.

Any suggestions would be helpful!

Hi all.. I know this is an old post but have a question that piggy backs off this..

We are coming up on our 1 year in our home we bought with an owner occupany loan. We want to air bnb it. It's a very busy beach town. We want to get another loan doing the same thing but will our current mortgage count against our DTI of we don't have rental history yet? How do we get that to not count against our DTI?

Hi all,

I currently have an offer in for a home. Inspections are all done and was smooth sailing but now our lender is questioning why we don't want to break our lease. We didn't expect to find our home so soon and still have 6 months left on our lease once we close.

We are doing 100% financing with a conventional loan through the credit union and will be owner occupying. I plan to move in asap upon closing. My husband can't get a work transfer for 90 days so might stay at the apt 2 days a week until he's transfered or else it's a 90 mile commute. 

Plus we have to pay closing costs so paying an additional 4k+ to break our lease just isn't reasonable and doesn't make sense. Also want to note the loan is only under my name and I'll be occupying the home upon close. Still waiting to hear back from underwriting. Lender said they may have an issue and want us to do a second home mortgage which we can't do and seems silly as there's not much overlap and only my husband will be staying there for about 90 days. 

I've had a few friends close on a home lately and said they were never questioned about the length of their current lease. Is this normally an issue?

Hi friends..

I'm in the process of buying my first investment property and have been presented with a few loan assistant options. I wanted to get some advice on the best route to take. Each program is from a different lender so wanted to get a unbiased opinion on which route you would take.

Option 1) 100% financing with interest rate around 4.2%. No PMI.

Option 2) up to 5% downpayment assistance at 3.2% but would have to pay PMI. However we would have some instant equity.

We are looking at homes around 200k. I hate the thought of paying pmi but seems if we go to option 1 we would be paying more interest anyways. Both loan options equal out to about the same per month on the mortgage.

Anything I'm missing here that we should keep in mind when making a decision?

Appreciate any insights here.

I'm curious if you ever found a property in Galveston? I just started looking into the Galveston/Surfside area and wondering if it's still profitable or if it's over saturated with air bnb yet? 

@Brian Nel- Thanks for the helpful info. I'm also interested in house hacking but with our budget of around $250K..not a whole lot of MFs available but will have to search the terms you mentioned in Zillow.

Do you find it worth while to buy cheap townhomes/apts? Considering there are some in half way decent areas (Sharpstown, Braeburn, Alief) where you could buy 2-3 apts for the price of one multi family. I know they don't appreciate like MF and SFH do- but wondering if buying up these smaller apartments and renting them out is worth it or a headache?!

@Kevin Wood- Do you have any properties in the Third or Fifth Ward? My husband and I are about ready to buy our first investment property but we will be doing an owner occupancy loan- so we would actually be living wherever we buy for the first year and most parts I have driven through still look pretty rough. Still torn on multi fam, single, or buying cheap apartments. Not really sure what is the best route?!

 Thanks for your response.

It seems it's at a point where this area is one of the lasts for people to go once Montrose/midtown/downtown fills up. I can see why investors are buying quickly but also want to make sure it's livable for myself and my husband while we fix it up. However I do feel the prices are high for such an area.