Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises that drive many of the underwriting decisions lenders make, have guidelines for evaluating conventional borrowers with no traditional credit.Each loan program and lender has its own requirements, but generally to qualify with nontraditional credit you'll need to have made 12 months of timely payments for at least two to three types of continuing obligations, such as housing, utilities and insurance.Be prepared to provide documentation of your payment history, such as canceled checks, money order receipts and account statements.

Fannie Mae HomePath properties can be as good a deal as any other, if you are careful.I've done a number of deals with HomePath in the past.

Hi Steve.Welcome to BP.If you are looking for on line places to research deals, you may want to try HomePath.com (Fannie Mae), HomeSteps.com (Freddie Mac) and HudHomes.com (HUD).

@John Calcanis,The delayed financing exception is a route to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac financing.

Many also send investors out like ants to do their dirty work to find that 1 in 1,000 deal they will partner with them on.So just be cautious and learn as much as you can.What about you purchasing a quad from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac?

Second, property, and rental, usually requires 20-25%, with fannie mae/freddie mac, conventional qualifying.

@Brian JonesYou won't be able to refinance out of the line of credit into a conventional product that's backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac within your LLC, but you should be able to refinance to a conventional product in your personal name.Stephanie

The more houses you can finance using conventional money, the better.Then, once you've got 10 or so (if your debt ratio can handle it) properties under your belt,start looking at portfolio lending that doesn't sell to Fannie Mae. 

Fannie Mae may follow suite, if they haven't already and I've missed it.

In fact, just recently I had a pick of four local banks that would do unlimited (full doc) investor loans, and then as soon as fannie mae announced they would follow freddie mac's lead and go down from an allowable number of mortgages from 10 to 4 as of December 1st, all four local banks dropped from unlimited to a max of 4, which I'm already over so I had to stop the process with them.However, I googled all of the local banks in the area where my properties are, and I contacted about 3 or 4 of them, and 1 will do up to 4 loans with their bank, but I can have more than 4 in general.