Bottom Line - as a real estate investor, its helpful to learn the "levers" that will determine the terms of the loans you are eligible for, and hopefully this is a helpful insight into how Loan Purpose affects your rate!

I cannot take two at once, since I am maximizing the amount for which I am eligible one the first one. 

This will be the first year that I get any tax benefits for the work I have done on my first rental, and I wanted to understand the very basics/fundamentals to determine how much I might get back. 

And the important thing is you learned a ton through experience and got the fundamentals down great. 

And if you make under the 80% limit in your county then you would be eligible for the loan, but then of course your debt to income ratio (along with rent for the property) still has to be high enough to qualify for the loan itself just like any other program.  

In this case, your $600k in cash is worth $600k in property value...and you're risking $600k in cash.2 - That same $600k in cash leveraged at 20% (DP) would equal $3M in property value...with the same $600k at risk...and, with 5 properties, or at least 5 times the properties, in cash flow to repay the same $600k in cash spent in option #1.Telling me more debt is less risky is fundamentally off.Physical property isn't like equities.

Don't forget that not only do you need to be sure to protect its corporate veil, but you also need to use commercial financing since legal entities such as a LLC is not eligible for conforming residential loans (e.g.

We have the flexibility to stay at another property for a full year if we needed to do that, if it means renting out our primary home for a full year as a vacation rental or LTR, if it could mean more eligible tax deductions.

Fundamentally diffrent strategies for different fundamentally different investment / business models.

This stuff is pretty easy fundamentally.