I finally signed up today in the hopes of gaining as much knowledge as I can.Brief summary of my reason for doing so:My family owns several commercial properties through an LLC, which was started by my father who has since passed on.We have a good amount of equity in our commercial buildings and are looking to expand into residential housing, though which avenue we are going to pursue is still undecided.I currently do not have enough knowledge or experience in the REI field to feel comfortable leveraging our commercial RE assets on residential properties.There's more to it than that, but I don't want my first post to be a novel.

If you feel comfortable with the payments on a deal, like the house, feel prices are about bottemed out or will not drop much beyond what you paid, are not planning to move soon, then go for it.

I don't feel comfortable allowing the tenant to do this, so I figured I would ask what the standard pratice is.

At least until the LLC owns enough assets that the bank feels comfortable that it can get it's money back just by going after the LLC should it need to foreclose on a property.

You are the only one who can decide what you are comfortable with.If your comfort level is a paid-off house and a couple of rentals, then that's what you do.

Tighten your seat belt, we are going to be in for one hell of a ride.

In case anyone missed it, credit union, credit union.If the rental property is rented, the rent can be applied @75% to help Your dti ratio, but I haven't seen that help lower the down stroke.Your best bet is to shop with out credit pulls, make face to face appointments, sit in the hot seat and follow some of Jimmy Moncrief's podcast suggestions, even though they are about commercial lending, His advice is solid.John

The sooner you can replace your W2 income, the sooner you'll be comfortable that you made a good decision.

Read and post on here to get comfortable in what you really want to do.

Nothing wrong with that if you're confident you can do as good a job...Just the flip side of the coin, I have an MBA and have always been comfortable doing my own taxes.