Getting Started with Financing

[Mike Cavallo]

I am very interested in getting started with multi family rental investing in FL, most likely the Tampa area.  My questions are: 

• How important is it to form a corporation before buying property #1?
• I envision my first purchase would be no more than a four unit dwelling.
• Because I want to preserve cash for value add improvements and reserves I want leverage financing as much as possible. With that in mind how realistic is it to expect that a newly formed LLC would be able to acquire the necessary financing? I suspect that I would likely have to guarantee the loan personally...
• Financing through my CU would be easiest but that would mean the initial purchase would have to be a non commercial loan. 
• How do most investors deal with this issue in the beginning?

Thank you in advance for your replies.

Mike