Hit the DTI wall, is it worth breaking the owner-occupant chain?

Waiting is the answer you don't like and it's still probably the answer. Two years of Schedule E turns three drags into three offsets, and you didn't pay anyone $30,000 or 25 percent down for the privilege. The properties keep amortizing and rents keep moving while you sit there.

I've held land through stretches where doing nothing was the highest return option available, and it's uncomfortable in exactly the way you're describing. Your ratio problem is temporary. An 80 percent loan to value DSCR note at a rate premium is permanent.

I've priced DSCR on about forty properties on my list and the coverage math is brutal right now. At 25 percent down and a rate a point and a half over owner-occupant, anything with rent under about 0.8 percent of purchase price a month lands under 1.15 coverage, and the lenders I called wanted 1.20 or better. Your "barely clears 1.0" tracks with what I see.

Something on the operations side that changes this calculation. You're describing four properties, three rented, and you moving again. Every move is a turn on the property you're leaving, and a first turn on a converted primary is the expensive one because owner-grade carpet and paint don't survive a tenant. My crews charge $1,800 to $3,500 for a full turn on a three bedroom depending on flooring. If you're adding a door a year you're also adding a turn a year on top of normal tenant churn. Four properties with staggered turns is a real schedule, and it's the thing that pushes people into hiring management, which is another 8 to 10 percent off the top.

Different angle. In the rural markets I watch, a $130,000 house rents for $1,150. Payment plus escrows sits near $950. Per door you're adding a third of the DTI load you'd add on a $320,000 property, so the ratio ceiling arrives much later. The catch is financing under about $100,000 gets thin, some lenders won't write it and the ones who will charge fees that don't scale down. And appraisals in thin markets come in wherever the appraiser feels like that week.

Of your three options the $30,000 paydown seems like the one you can actually control. You know the number, you know what it buys, and the money stays in your own property instead of going to a lender as a rate premium. Is there a reason that's worse than waiting two years other than that it's $30,000?

verity, the reason is that the overlay is the lender's number, not a law, and they can change it while you're saving toward it. quarry, get that requirement in writing before you send anyone $30,000.