Everything else is either designed to make it so difficult for creditors that they will be willing to negotiate a more favorable settlement; a crap shoot; or designed to give the client a false peace of mind while getting him to pay top dollar for legal and accounting fees.

Easier to find financing if you have some "Skin in the game" Equity can come in many forms, cash, devalued purchase, sweat equity in rehab. portfolio loans with combined equity of other properties.

I am thinking of using a conventional loan (to the amount I can qualify for) in combination with a hard money loan, then BRRRRing the property to repay the hard money loan (after a refi) and keeping my conventional bank loan.

There's plenty of crap that's falling down, don't get me wrong, but once you get into the brick-veneer builds, the standards of building quality generally take a disproportionate jump.

The west side of the metro seems to have the best combination of growth, value, and long-range desirability.  

In the discount brokerage space that is about the best combination of price and control of outcome you can ask for.  

After scoring the brother/sister separately, I would combine their score for a total and then determine if they are denied, approved, or approved with contingencies.That's probably too much for you so I would just consider the general risk of each individual.

You might also consider talking with different lenders and seeing which lenders will do a 401(k) loan that combines and FHA loan with the cost to rehab built into the loan. let me know if you have any questions, I am in Utah, and I’m trying to do the same thing but the only thing that’s stopping me is my credit score and financing the down payment.

You could do this again and again, rolling that small multifamily into larger and larger apartment buildings.From the stories I’ve heard about HELOCs, you could potentially wrap up all your properties under a single umbrella and borrow against the combined equity of all of them. 

For example each property may only be worth $200,000 and 10 of these properties are collateral for one $800,000 loan, while each property would be upside down and seem to be over encumbered but combined they are only at 40% LTV....