All Forum Posts by: Elise Marquette

If keeping all your cash in your pocket is priority to you in your next deal, then yes it does sound like refinancing out of the VA loan into a conventional is your best bet. How much equity do you have in your condo? If it's less than 20% equity then you may have to pay mortgage insurance until you get to 20% or so equity in the property. Of course rates will be a touch higher for a conventional loan than a VA. Keep in mind your funding fee for your next VA purchase will also increase to 3.6% of the loan amount.

This is straight from the FHA guideline on non-occupying co borrowers. Hope this is helpful!

@Matthew Conner FHA doesn't allow non occupant co borrower on a multi for 3.5% down. The down payment requirement comes up to around 25%. Conventional stopped their low down payment home ready and home possible programs a little while ago and now require 25% down for 3 to 4 unit.

Since you'll be qualifying off commission income, you'll need two years of history to show receiving commission income. Your GMI is typically averaged out over two years. Of course with seller financing all bets are off- it's all on what the seller agrees to do. 

Hi Brian, this will really depend on your personal finances and your debt to income ratio. Debt to income ratio is the ratio of your gross monthly income to your total monthly expenses (mortgage payments, auto payments, student loans, credit cards, etc.). If you make enough gross each month to support two full mortgage payments without a renter, then you should be fine but the only way to know for sure will be to have a lender review your file. 

Is this a Conventional loan or a non-QM loan? Fannie Mae and Freddie recently limited 7% of their portfolio to be investment/second homes so this has caused rates to increase for Conventional investment properties. 

Lenders actually hire a third party appraiser to complete the appraiser and don't have much control over their turn times. It depends on how busy the appraiser is. How long have you been waiting for an appraisal?

@Jeff Shumway can you assist?

If the eviction moratorium ends and people start paying again, one would think that would prevent a wave of foreclosures, no? The thought being that once people start paying their rent again, the mortgage gets paid thus no foreclosure. I believe FNMA capped investment and second home loans to 7% of their portfolio before there was rulings to end the moratorium (although I'm sure the GSEs had to have some foresight to know the moratoriums were going to end at some point??) I would be very interested to see the occupancy types of mortgages currently in forbearance.

I have also heard there are not too many delinquent households and I do think people have more equity built up in their homes than they did in 2008. We are dealing with an entirely different animal than we were back in 2008 so I don't think it's fair to compare this housing market for 2006-2008. 

It honestly depends on the lender. Local lenders and lenders from out of state are equally capable of messing up a deal. Just because a lender is local does not mean they are competent by any means! I've worked for local lenders and big lenders and a lot of it comes down to a convenience factor- if you work with a lender that is licensed in multiple states you save yourself the headache of sending your tax returns and re-explaining your business goals and plans a hundred times over. As you get more properties, the paperwork required from your end gets more and more intensive so it can be convenient to work with a lender who has it all on file, is familiar with what you're doing, and ready to go for whatever state you're looking to buy in. Local lenders with credit unions may have quirky loan products that you wouldn't find at a big box lender but this is not always the case. And again, you can run into the problem of delays in getting approved (and potentially missing out on great deals!) due to new lenders trying to make heads or tails of properties, tax returns, income documents, business entities, etc. I'm all for supporting and shopping local but sometimes it isn't always the best option.