All Forum Posts by: Reid Chauvin

Work on lining up a job so that you have a source of income to qualify for a loan. This will help dictate what price home you can afford so that you can let your realtor know what range you should be looking in. 

Check your credit scores online - see if there's things you can do to improve them. 

Save up what money you can for a down payment. There are down payment assistance programs out there to lessen the burden for lower-income folks, but you will still end up needing some assets whether it be for closing costs or establishing a reserve for maintenance. 

 In response to your last point about what would be better, moving into a unit or renting them both out: consider that the financing (i.e., the rate) is going to be quite a bit lower if you occupy one of the units. You would only need to live in one of those units for a year too in order to take advantage of the primary residence financing. This would probably make managing the property quite a bit more convenient as well. 

Welcome Taylor and Stephen! Please feel free to reach out with any questions around financing your purchase! 

I'd recommend investing some time in learning about the financing process (i.e., what it takes for a borrower to qualify to buy a house, and the steps in the process from pre-approval -> purchase agreement -> closing). 

You can actually purchase the property in your own name, get the more beneficial financing, and subsequently transfer the property into an LLC (you may have to wait a month or two to do the transfer - check with the lender). Your lender has to sell the loan to Fannie Mae, not Freddie Mac.

 I was just about to recommend the Kwikset Smartkey. Super easy and cost effective way to re-key the locks. 

After a quick google search you appear to be right. If that's the case, I suppose all you could do is withhold a portion of deposit to repair any damage from the animals. Definitely not an ideal situation...

Definitely worthwhile to have a mortgage lender run this scenario for you to see if you'd qualify. Many will lend on the home despite it's condition, and you'd likely have more favorable terms than going the hard money route - especially if you're planning to planning to claim this as a primary residence and move-in. 

Hard money plus refinance will be quite a bit more costly in both upfront costs and interest rate. 

Up your liability insurance and require a hefty pet deposit. 

I agree with @Joseph P Finkelstein that finding a co-signer to supplement your income is your best bet, if at all possible. With this being an income-generating property that is cash-flow positive, this should not have negative long-term effects on you or the co-signer's DTI.