All Forum Posts by: Emily McCabe

@Brie Schmidt I have a one year old, so the pain of child birth is fresh in my mind, hard to imagine something worse haha... His business is auto collision repair. We have a small shop on our property. We just opened our shop last year, so we only have 1 year of tax returns. In 2015, he worked at a collision repair shop and received W2s, but his pay was "flat rate" which is similar to commission, so that's also a mess. I'm guessing the fact that his source of income wasn't the same for the past 2 years would also be a big problem. It sounds like I need to just figure out how to buy it without including him in the paperwork.

@Brie Schmidt thank you! 

My husband is self-employed. We want to buy our first rental property, but I can't qualify for much more on my own, because I already own our house. When we bought our house, our lender said we couldn't use his income, so we didn't even bother putting his name on the loan/house. But it would really help if we could use even a little bit of his income so we could spend more on a rental. I don't want to buy something too cheap and dumpy... Anyone know what the usual rules are for this? Do any lenders allow it, and what are requirements for documentation etc.?

I have a one year old. Instead of owner-occupied rentals, we bought a "livable" foreclosure that we're flipping while we live here. (This is the second one we've done). We're hoping to stay here for many years, but use the equity we've built (through home equity loans, heloc, etc.) to buy a cheap rental property later this year, and go from there. Having kids does really complicate things, especially just starting out. Renovating our house with a toddler isn't ideal, but we're taking our time and doing what we can :) Good luck!

@Charles Kao thanks, the credit card idea is interesting. I'm really afraid of getting stuck in a situation like that and not being able to refi for some reason. My debt-to-income is tight.. I owe 330k on my current house, and my husband works, but he's self employed, so we can't use his income to qualify for loans. I guess my fear is that a lender will tell me I'll be able to refi, but then after the fact, it won't go through for some reason, and I'll be stuck with high interest loans. Not sure what i would do then. Something to think about though

@Jason Hirko

Yes, that's what I was talking about. Thank you both for the feedback. Any idea if it would be a possibility to get a HELOC on my current home and use that to buy something, and then do a cash out refi like you were saying?

It seems like a lot of the good deals on multifamily properties sell at auction. But, most of the properties on auction.com are being sold cash only. Any ideas on how to get around this and buy one with financing? Could you use hard money somehow? I know it's a long shot but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something here before I write auctions off as an option.

Hi, I'm new here, thanks for offering to answer questions! I really want to collect buy-and-hold multi-unit properties, but I'm having trouble getting started. I need a 25% down payment to buy my first one, but I think it'll take me quite a while to save up that much cash. The properties I like in my area are going for 150-250k. Should I just wait it out and try to save? Would it be a mistake to try to come up with the money more creatively? I think I have a bit of equity in my home, also have some retirement savings I could borrow from, or could even go the route of credit cards, etc. I think I'm just afraid of borrowing too much and getting myself into trouble. I could also try to go in with a partner, but I'm afraid that could get messy, and it would limit my potential cash flow. Any advice?