How to think about it (the 30-second version)

Three questions decide which loan you should be looking at. Answer them and half the work is already done.

1. How many financed properties do you own right now? (Including your primary, second home, and every rental.) Under 10 — conventional is on the table. 10 or more — you are in DSCR or portfolio territory.
2. How does your tax return look? If you write everything off and your AGI is low, full-doc conventional will fight you. DSCR or bank-statement programs do not care about your 1040.
3. What is the property doing? Long-term rental, short-term rental, foreign national purchase, or a 5-property bundle? The answer narrows your options down to one or two products fast.

Three strategies almost every successful investor uses

Before we dive into the product menu, three plays worth knowing — because they shape which loan you should pick at each stage of your build.

1. House-hacking

Buy a 2–4 unit property as a primary residence, live in one unit, rent the others. You get owner-occupied financing — 5% down on a duplex with conventional, 3.5% down with FHA — and the rental income from the other units helps you qualify. After a year, you can move out, buy another house hack, and the previous property converts to a pure rental at conventional NOO terms. Repeat this twice and you own 6 doors with very little down.

2. The 10-property runway

Use your conventional NOO financing aggressively for your first ten financed properties. That is the cheapest investor money in the entire mortgage market — 15% down on a 1-unit, 25% on a 2-4 unit, agency rates, no DSCR overlay. Most investors leave money on the table by jumping to DSCR too early “for convenience.” Convenience costs about 0.50%–1.00% in rate. Burn through your ten before you give that up.

3. BRRRR — buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat

The play that built most modern rental portfolios: acquire a distressed property with hard money or cash, rehab it, lease it up, then refinance into long-term financing using the new (higher) appraised value to pull most or all of your capital back out. Roll that capital into the next deal. Most BRRRR refinances exit into either DSCR (if you are over 10 properties or closing in an LLC) or conventional NOO (if you have agency capacity left).

Three things most investors do not know going in

Insider Insight #1 — The 10-property cap counts your primary and your second home.

Fannie Mae’s 10-financed-property limit is not “10 rentals.” It is 10 total financed properties on your credit. Primary residence counts. Vacation home counts. So if you own a home, a Smoky Mountain second home, and 8 rentals — you are at 10, and the next conventional file is going to bounce. This is why investors who plan ahead burn their conventional capacity on rentals first and finance the second home some other way.

Insider Insight #2 — DSCR is not the only LLC option, but conventional NOO is never an LLC option.

If you want to close in an LLC for asset protection or anonymity, conventional NOO is off the table. Conventional Fannie / Freddie loans must vest in personal name. DSCR, bank-statement, foreign national, and portfolio loans all support LLC vesting (DSCR most commonly). Decide which matters more — the 0.50%–1.00% pricing edge of conventional, or the entity protection of the LLC. Many investors run both: conventional in personal name for properties 1–10, DSCR in LLC after that.

Insider Insight #3 — Reserves stack, and they are the silent killer of investor pre-approvals.

Most agency and DSCR programs require 6 months of PITIA reserves per financed property. So if you own 4 rentals at $2,500 PITIA each, you need $60,000 sitting in reserves before you buy the fifth. Investors fixate on down payment and forget reserves — and walk into a pre-approval expecting $100K to be enough for a $400K rental, when the reserve requirement alone eats half of it. Build the reserve cushion in parallel with the down payment, not after.

Quick FAQ

How is investment-property pricing different from owner-occupied?

Investment-property rates run roughly 0.50%–1.50% higher than the same borrower’s owner-occupied rate. Cash-out adds another 0.25%–0.50%. Lower credit, sub-1.00 DSCR, condotels, and short-term-rental use cases each add their own pricing layer. The good news: rates have to make sense against the rent the property pays you, not your salary — so a slightly higher rate on a property that throws off real cash flow is still a strong investment.

Can rental income from the property I am buying count toward qualifying?

Yes — and how it counts depends on the loan. On conventional NOO, the appraiser fills out Form 1007 and 75% of the estimated market rent counts toward your income. On DSCR, the subject property’s rent is the entire qualification. On a 2-4 unit primary (house hack), 75% of the rent from the additional units counts as qualifying income.

I have great credit but heavy tax write-offs. Will I qualify?

Probably not on full-doc conventional — the bank reads your AGI, not your gross. But you have three other doors: DSCR (qualifies the property, not you), bank statement (uses your deposits), and asset depletion (uses your liquid assets as monthly income). Heavy-write-off investors are the exact reason these programs exist.

Can I close in an LLC?

On most investor products — yes. DSCR, bank-statement, asset depletion, foreign national, and portfolio loans all support LLC vesting. Conventional NOO is the exception: agency rules require personal-name vesting.

Are short-term rentals (Airbnb / VRBO) financeable?

Yes, on DSCR. Most DSCR programs accept short-term-rental income either via the conservative Form 1007 long-term market-rent estimate or via an STR-specific appraisal addendum that prices off projected nightly rate × occupancy × 365.

How fast can an investor loan close?

Conventional NOO: 21–30 days. DSCR: 18–25 days. Foreign national: 25–35 days. Portfolio: 30–45 days. Most delays are document-chase delays, and we kill those with a tight pre-approval up front.

Free pre-approval. Soft credit pull. Zero hit to your score.

Before you make an offer, you need to know what the bank will actually back you on. A real pre-approval — not a quick online estimate — gives you the loan amount, the program, the rate range, and the monthly payment in writing. We pull a soft credit report (no impact to your score), review your income and reserves, and run the deal through underwriting logic so you walk into a property tour or a 1031 exchange knowing exactly what you can close on.

For investors, this matters double. Listing agents on rental properties take cash buyers and pre-approved investor offers seriously — everyone else gets passed over. Get the pre-approval first, then go shopping with leverage.

>> APPLY NOW — START YOUR PRE-APPROVAL <<

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