Stuck at 10 Loan Limit! Seeking lender/financing to move past it!

[Jeff L.]

Hi BP,

I'm a real estate investor from Southern California who buys single-family houses in Indianapolis.

As you may know, Fannie Mae doesn't allow me to get any more conventional mortgages after 10.

I'm closing on my 10th property soon, so I'm urgently seeking a financing solution to move past this limit.

From what I've researched, possibilities include:

• Portfolio loan
• Commercial loan
• Blanket loan on my current houses so I can start over the 10 conventional loans
• Something else

I move fast, and I'm trying to buy as many solid properties as fast as I can. I'm looking for a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship with a lender to grow my portfolio quickly.

If you have any products or ideas that could help me continue investing (or can refer me another lender that does), I'd love to hear about them.

If you're a lender, please either send me a private message or post your contact info in this thread, and I'll get in touch with you with more info on my existing properties and loans.

Thank you!

Keywords: Indy, portfolio lender, unconventional financing, creative financing

[Chris Mason]

Lender here, traditional/conventional type. A few tricks:

* If married: start splitting properties up so that both the loan AND title for some are in her name only as "....a married woman, as her sole and separate property" and some yours. If you both have the credit/income, this alone increases the cap to 20 financed properties. California is a Community Property state, so the implications of divorce or death aren't nearly as significant in non-CP states (but I'm not a divorce lawyer, so please qualify that with your lawyer). 

* If you've got sufficient equity, start shoving as much debt as possible into as few properties as possible. We look at number of "financed properties," not number of properties. Cash out refinance on one property to pay off the mortgage of another entirely, and boom you now have 1 fewer financed property. (EDIT: if your equity position isn't quite that sexy, you can of course cash out 2-3 to pay #4 off entirely. And so on)

* If one or two of these is in some mixed zoning area, get it zoned commercial and get the appropriate financing too. Commercial doesn't count towards limit. In general as you buy and well, diversifying a little bit into commercial will free up what you can do in residential.

* Use crappy financing. 

I've used trick #1 and #2 above, never used trick #3 as I don't do commercial.