We were shopping for mortgages thinking if it was for the one purchase, it would only count against us once, but that's apparently only if it's in the same 2 weeks, so each inquiry counted against us, especially as lender said we should keep our pre-approval active so they'd pull another credit check every 3 months or so, and we went almost a year before actually finding a deal worth buying.  

@Nicholas Cornford Why not just shop around lenders now and see if they can use the rental income to help you qualify?  

We followed up with a meeting at a coffee shop.The deal went nowhere, however he did persist and our coffee shop meetings continued.

If you are fix & flipping, they bring you deals that you can partner with them to F&F and they have the contractors, lenders, mentors and project managers that make it a one-stop-shop.  

We shopped a couple of banks (National Penn was/is offering 100% equity on HELOC's) but decided to go with our credit union (PSECU) because they charged zero fees, and paid for the appraisal.

It's a great coffee shop and the head barista is a latte art world champ.

It is a 3 bedrooms 2 bath home and is close to the interstate and shopping.  

That's odd though because I reached out to two separate mortgage officers and they both told me the same thing; apparently I need to shop around a little more.I understand that this should sometimes be factored in as the cost to play but consistently after factoring in the water, PMI, lawn/snow potentially, etc., I just couldn't justify it in comparison to a conventional loan on a single family.

Hi All,I'm interesting in buying a property has two apartments in second and third floor and a coffee shop in first floor. the zoning code for property is cmx1. my question is that how difficult to convert the first floor into the third unit. i was told convert a commercial space to a residential will be easier than convert a residential one into commercial one.

Stop price shopping and start talking to people.