All Forum Posts by: Shane Milne

When it comes to occupancy, VA guidelines specify that a spouse can satisfy the occupancy requirement if the veteran cannot personally occupy the dwelling within a reasonable amount of time (typically 60 days) due to distance employment other than military service. I'd recommend you speak with the Houston VA Regional Loan Center to discuss the specific circumstances to get their "blessing" so to speak. That way when you speak to your eventual loan officer about the irregular occupancy situation you can be confident that VA is OK with it.

The 90 day FHA flipping requirement means that you can't buy a property where the previous seller has purchased it within 90 days; the exceptions are in the case of bank owned properties & RELO companies. This means you can't buy a home, fix it and sell it within 90 days to someone with FHA financing or they'll use the lowest sales price in the past X amount of months (can't remember the exact amount of months off the top of my head) - which is probably what you bought it at. If you sell within 3-6 months to someone using FHA then two appraisals need to be done.

The 12 month cash out requirement is when doing a cash out refinance and the appraisal is within 12 months of the purchase date, the value the lender will use is the lower of the appraised value or the purchase price + documented cost of improvements.

However if you are buying your homes as investment properties then you don't need to worry about FHA when financing since FHA is for owner occupied only... only when buyers approach you.

Depending on how many properties you own you might be up against Fannie/Freddie limits on max # of financed properties being 4. A portfolio lender doesn't sell to Fannie or Freddie and retains their loans, making them able to do more than 4. Right now we have a portfolio lender who'll do more than 4 but the rates aren't attractive at all - around 9%. But it's cheaper than hard money. If you are financing 4 or less then options are plenty.