If your net monthly positive cashflow is 2.5x your personal housing expense plus all other non-mortgage consumer monthly debt obligations, and you are buying cashflow positive real estate, you can get a normal Fannie loan.

I've had a few discussions about the best way to create a plan in order to "snow ball" your way to owning many REI properties (buy and hold for rent).After Googling around and even reading blogs on this site, I've thought about doing something like the following:Buy my first rental property (SFH) with cash (around $60-70k) where I'd expect about $500 cashflow per monthCurrently I have about $105-110k available (after taking out an emergency fund)Then shortly after, buy my second rental property (SFH) but take out a mortgage and put down around 25% on a $60-70k houseThe cash flow on this property specifically would likely break even (at or near 0) but this would be on a 15 year mortgage and I can use some (or most) of the cash flow from the first to help pay down that mortgage faster, along with my corporate job monthly savings tooI feel I could pay it off anywhere from 5 - 10 years depending on the exact strategy If/When I get the 2nd one, then shortly after that, try and get a 3rd SFH rental property and continue this snow ball effect to build up by rental portfolioObviously this is easier said than done, along with risks and I honestly do not have any real experience with rental properties as this is my first time diving into this type of investing.My main questions would be -- Has anyone done a similar strategy to help build their portfolio quicker?

Though the debt is interest free, it still weighs on us especially since it's family.

Mainly a realtor who is familiar with investment properties is preferred. 

Bought it for 56k; paid off student loan and car debt.

Also, think of alternative sources of funding: maybe instead of debt, offer equity to your potential partner(s) or ask sellers about seller financing.

Cost me most of my debt to income and I had to drop some personal money but it worked out well.

I am trying to get a business line of credit using my EIN mainly to establish business credit..

Hypothetically speakings, lets say I have a bedroom on the main level that I wanted to rent, but my neighbors dogs eliminated that option, so I put the bed in the basement?

We're keeping LTV low, taking more term on our debt than we anticipate needing, and have a plan that focuses on bringing the old leases more in line with the current average rates.We also run Downside scenarios to see what the numbers look like if we're wrong about room to increase or (worse) the market changes and results in vacancy going up and rates going down.Those are not pretty of course, but a large part of winning is being able to stay in the game.