Love getting the person that has zero debt to start the game.

The problem is, that's not proper accounting because a credit card is a liability, and doing this workaround will reduce your assets rather than increase your liabilities, which totally messes up your balance sheet and debt-to-income ratios.  

However, be careful of taking on too much debt.  

In general, multifamily properties are a popular choice for investors because they offer the potential for cash flow, scalability, and the ability to amortize debt across multiple units.

I am currently waiting on a rather large legal settlement to hopefully hurry up and get him his $16,000 or if we can find someone to go ahead and pay him off early (no prepayment penalty), which would be hopefully paid off sooner than later as well in exchange for a secured lien on the property plus repayment of the $16,000 plus interest short term.

I’ve often seen this happen where initial approval is given, but debt-to-income issues arise once they discover you’re purchasing another property.

I don't believe you would properly replace the debt in this situation.

There is life stages to investing, and the math is clear that strategic debt use, strategic leverage, pyramiding, appreciation, is the wealth generator. 

Taking out more debt does not sound like the best option IMO.

My husband was able to consolidate and re-finance the debt after we executed the deal but this was only possible because we bought a VERY modest property of 70k as a learning tool to really see what buying a home in CR would be like.