Having 3x income to cover rent is a rule no matter where they are.

I don't know that I've ever met a 1st gen African LO, but I've met 1st gen LO Russians, Latinas, Brits... and to the extent that African accents are associated with "Nigerian Prince" schemes, note that the overwhelming majority of LOs doing shady things circa 2004-2007 had accents identical to what you would expect my accent to be based on my profile picture, so you certainly shouldn't assume that I'm not shady based on my accent any more than you should assume someone is shady if they have an accent that sounds African.

If not, on paper you're basically paying people to apply for your rental by covering a portion of the application cost.

@Bradley Jordan My recommendation is that you ask the 2nd broker to write in specific language that covers your situation.

I'd be coming in to cover some of the repair costs, with about $40k of my own money.

Hard money is really only best for investments where you have room to cover the expenses and still make a nice profit for yourself.

I’m sorry I feel like I misspoke somewhere along the line because the picture you painted is not at all I how conduct myself!

My plan is to cover the bulk of the materials myself until I build solid relationships with contractors.Thanks again for your insight!

If you used an FHA loan you may not have built up enough to borrow and buy another.I would run the numbers... can you pull out enough equity to have a down payment and have cash flow cover your refinanced mortgage?

In a situation like this if you had an IRA the only way to cover the need is to take a distribution from your IRA, which would be subject to taxes and penalties, resulting in losing up to 50% of the amount you take out. 401k allows you to take personal loan from it without penalties or taxes, the loan has to be repaid back using amortized payment over period of 5 years.