. ✨ looking for ideas on to  how to acquire an owner-occupied property  with 5% down by using a mortgage loan product to purchase , improve and  avoid mortgage insurance based on projected value?

I'm a project manager that serves as a general contractor for real estate professionals.

if your doing a senior project I would suspect your best and most cost effective landing solution is going to be a local community bank that loves real estate.. in my experience most will want 50% down on the dirt and a ton of experience and a really strong balance sheet.Myself I always pay cash for the dirt this makes finding a lending partner much easier.

I know cash flow is tough to come by right now, even harder when adding in the HELOC to the DS, so I'm curious about what it would take to refinance a property on closing day?

Lending is tough, you need to know the market you're lending in, usually you want to have an understanding of credit-risk and be able to pull credit and run background to get a better read on your borrower.

Quote from @Michael Wiley: Thank you for taking on this project. 

I ask because I've interviewed a number of general contractors over the years for my various real estate projects and am shocked at how the vast majority showed up to the job site to give an estimate in a vehicle that did not display their contractor license number or business name.Aside from this one issue, they'd often have great portfolios, long list of successful permits I could verify they pulled, great references, no complaints on their license, and had been licensed for over a decade.

NJ is a tough state to evict.

I’m a mother, a wife, and I work in healthcare, so balancing everything is tough, but real estate is my passion, and I’m chasing my dreams.

This would make it into two, two bedroom units with the intent of making them long term rentals.I'm guilty of having a lot of projects going at once so my focus right now is bringing the cottage to a point to refinance out of the private money and either make it our primary residence for a year for the financing perks or to go straight into a short term rental.With the four bedroom house I'm trying to decide if it's worth splitting into two units or if I should keep it a four bedroom rental.The cottage I'm also tempted to do mid term with to lower the turnover and maintenance but open to suggestions.The third property I'll probably just let the current renters pay the mortgage for the time being if I'm able to acquire it anytime soon.