I will be using a combination of VA loans and conventional loans to get started with multi-family residential and eventually multi-family commercial properties.

This meant that the appraiser would then take the current rents, which couldn't service the higher debt level.

If you factor in all your costs including debt service 1% generally in not enough; you really have to hit 1.25 or 1.5 to cover everything and have some left over.

You can also tweak your investment criteria in the exact way you want (for example, if you want to go ultra conservative and not have any debt, you can do that.

@Chris DeSisto I think you are confusing terms.....the “equi” in “equitable interest” has nothing to do with “equity”, as in the spread between debt and value....it’s a legal determination of “rights”, and would apply just as well to an upside down property.

To summarize, if you close with same lenders, they are aware of both files and they will calculate the new total monthly debt, if you are not going with same lender then you should do the refi cash out first as the DTI (debt to income ratio) is more loose on HELOCs. 

Ultimately, through learning and copying their process, we were able to increase our available credit from about 250-280k to over a million in a few years and we were eventually able to transfer a large portion our personal debt that we were using for business purposes over to business debt that did not effect my personal credit score any more.

My daughter just turned 10 months, so would be looking for daycares for now.I dont have any cash saved now because I'm clearing all credit card debt, and plus I just bought my first property in October.

@Jack B.How does having less debt equate to less risk?

Other than that all of my residual cash goes to my investment account for REI or other opportunities.Car Payment: 2.99% @$270 a month Owe $8,000Live overseas in Germany and have no mortgage or other debt except for car and my REI.As I first stated my initial goal was to have 10 homes by the end of 2018 and I was close but had a duplex fall through in December.