There are so many successful military investors on here.

As for getting a HELOC, I have had success with Navy Federal Credit Union.

I have worked in the construction industry for 19 years as a union Millwright.My wife and I have been talking about starting a real estate portfollio for years and are excited to work at making it a reality.

In our case, we bought in a smaller city near an military base. 

I paid cash and am going to refi cash out with a local credit union once it is fixed up and leased out, then buy another house with the $$$.

I'm a local Realtor who specializes in investment properties and working with the military/veterans.  

(at least these are figures that I seen).Appraisals usually range from $500 to $1000 depending on the size of the house(at least from my experience).If they are really charging $3500 for a loan origination fee - I would shop around for a smaller bank and even some credit unions.

Thank you Hi Mary this is a different topic thread but Fannie used to count all properties in entities as "financed properties," as long as you owned more than 25% in that entity as documented by your annual K1 form which your LP/LLC/Scorp/flow through entity will show your ownership percentage.This meant that even if the mortgage note was in the LLC's name and the title was in the LLC's name you'd still be hit with these properties as financed properties as long as you owned more than 25% of the company/entity.Fannie has evolved their language on how they count financed properties in late 2017.Now their emphasis is on you being "personally obligated," on the note or basically if you're personally obligated on the note/mortgage/paper instrument.A real life experience or example is that most local credit unions or community banks that use the same loan origination software  will make you sign make you sign the mortgage note as a manager of your LLC however the personal guarantee (PG) is a separate document.

I called my credit union, Navy Federal and asked them some specific questions about their mortgage programs.

I am a union welder/plumber and my wife is a registered nurse.