All Forum Posts by: Ham Merritt

@Ronaldo Carvalho Do you plan to finance the purchase? If you do, conventional financing will not be an option for this purchase as anything over 4 units is considered commercial property. You would need to obtain a commercial loan in order to finance the transaction. If you are using cash or a hard money lender, then no worries there. Good luck!

Welcome to the BP community @Anne Leger I wish you and your husband the best of luck. In my opinion, house hacking is a great way to get your foot in the door. If you purchase a 2 family as a primary residence and intend to rent out the other unit, you can tie the rental income into the debt ratio. I know Chicago is full of condos, which can be challenging to finance with an FHA loan however, FHA would be a great product for you as a first time home buyer and house hacking. If you are unable to go the FHA route due to the condo not being FHA eligible, the other option would be to go conventional. The nice thing about FHA is the down payment for a 2 unit would be 3.5% while the conventional 2 unit purchase would be 15%. Hope this helps.

@Justin Schaefer have you been able to connect with @Michael Henry at all? If he cannot help you he should be able to connect you to someone who can. Let me know if you have not connected with anyone by next week and I will put you in touch with another agent I know down in that area.

@Jason Meyers Find out who the owner is & call them direct. Let them know that the broker they listed with apparently does not want to sell their property because you have been trying to get in touch with him without a response back. If it was a conventional deal and my name was on the sign I would have called you back. Maybe i'm naive and do not know the commercial market well enough.

@Bob E. Any luck in Milwaukee?

@Kevin Zwieg Welcome to BP. Hope you find some success utilizing the site for the resources available.

@Jason Meyers Are you looking at multi unit properties? That could be the issue. I might be perceiving your original message wrong however, any property with more than 4 units falls under the commercial umbrella. Conventional brokers cannot lend on commercial product. Maybe that is why they are not calling back. How many units do the properties have that you are looking at?

@Josh Teunissen There are easier ways to go about making the 2nd transaction happen. What type of loan product is your 1st purchase? FHA, USDA, Conventional? If your purchasing in rural areas I would recommend the USDA product as it is a really nice product for rural area purchases. Low interest rate, low down payments, and really low mortgage insurance.

@Daniel M. @Michael Henry AKA, "Mr. Duplex" is a good resource here locally for duplex deals. I would recommend you connect with him if you have not already.

@Craig Devine @Scott Van Straten Congrats to the both of you and best of luck with everything. There are a lot of resources available to you through this site. Just ask and you will find. Hope the market is treating you well up there.