I tried to do a refinance with my bank Navy Federal Credit Union, but because I don't live in the property I can't do a refinance as a primary or secondary home. 

Smaller banks and credit unions are more known to give LOC's on investment properties, however banks such as Santander also offer HELOCs on residential investment properties at 70% LTV.  

I know we need to setup a separate bank account from our personal finances to run our rental properties business, but not sure if we should go through a "big bank" or "small bank"/credit union.  

I'm working in the gulf right now (non-union) on shorter hitches, but it still leaves me with some spare time to work on REI.  

Hi Zane....good to see a fellow South African in the BP community. 

If you have a steady job and make a decent wage and you like your credit union, talk to the manager and let them know the situation.

Does anyone else have any contact info on banks / credit unions that that would be able to make that loan?

I am looking for responses from people that has used credit unions in the Chicagoland area and surrounding suburbs for HELOCS. 


This may be a long post, but I thought it would be good to walk through everything step-by-step, and explain my thinking along the way.If you want to stick with me through it all, here we go:I was not going to be getting a conventional mortgage for my first property for a number of reasons.First, I am still annoyed at the hoops I had to jump through to get a mortgage for my primary residence.Second, my liquid cash was on the lower end.Third, the properties that I would need to start out with would not be financeable anyway.Fourth, my DTI is on the high side, due to the decision that we made to take out a HELOC to complete interior improvements on my primary house.So, I decided that my path was going to be to form a single member LLC, and take a loan from my 401(k) at work to finance the down payment.Since I do not view the 401(k) loan as a long-term solution, I am treating like hard money, and pay it off ASAP.So, my first deal would be a flip, or a rental that was such a good deal, that I could re-fi out and pull all my cash out.I decided to reach out to the commercial lending department of the local credit union, which I am a member.The person I talked to (who became my lender) is fantastic.I told him what types of properties I was looking for, and that I’d look to turn them into rentals, or to flip them.I will never forget his response, which reminded me why I love this credit union.He said:“Typically, the deals you are talking about are much smaller than the deals we like to do.However, we also realize that you can not get to that level unless someone helps you get there.So, if the numbers make sense, we will see if any of our products fit.”Awesome!

The upside is that there is no lien on the property.If you have the ability to do a refinance after a seasoning period, and the house is worth more than you paid for it, consider doing that and pulling out all your capital.If you use a smaller credit union, some will bundle multiple small properties into one blanket loan.