An alternative lender may offer better leverage but will be more costly.

Alternatively, there is a category of loans called non-QM.

For those who feel comfortable living with roommates or who want to get into real estate investment gradually, house hacking SFR is an excellent alternative since it enables you to start small and live in one unit while renting out the others.

The horrific things that happened to me forced me think of alternate ways to get into a home.

A possible alternative to cash out is to sell the property to your family member, so that the property stays in the family and the equity is accessed.

An alternative I've considered is renting while in CS and buying an area with a lower cost of living in another part of the country, which of course wouldn't allow the VA loan to be used.

Or the alternatives are to receive BSEED tickets, tenants can put rent in escrow, etc.

Alternatively you can hire someone with a broker's license to be your "broker of record" to open your brokerage.

My idea for an alternative is to use Bill Pay and just register the CC payment by transferring from the checking account and writing a "check" from the CC account for all the bills paid in that period.  

The alternative is to add a new LinkedIn profile dedicated to REI.