Russell Stout

If you’re buying a condo in Austin this fall, or you own one and plan to sell, something changed on August 3rd that nobody sent you a letter about. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rewrote how condo projects get approved for financing — and the practical effect is that buildings which were financeable in July […]

Some of the strongest financial profiles I see get rejected by traditional underwriting for the dumbest possible reason: no qualifying “income” on paper. Retirees living comfortably off investments. Business owners who legally write off enough that their tax return understates what they actually earn. Investors sitting on real assets who just don’t draw a W-2 […]

There’s a specific moment that trips up real estate investors, and it has nothing to do with finding the next property. You sell a rental, you’re sitting on a gain you’d rather not hand to the IRS, and a 1031 exchange is the obvious move. Then you go to finance the replacement property, it’s bigger […]

Austin investors run into the same wall eventually: your personal income can only qualify so many mortgages before your debt-to-income ratio says no, even when the properties themselves cash flow fine. That’s exactly the problem DSCR loans were built to solve — and exactly why knowing when to use one instead of conventional financing is […]

Most investors assume the down payment on a rental property has to come out of their own account — that’s how it works on a primary residence, so why would investment property be different? On a lot of DSCR loans, it isn’t. Here’s the part almost nobody explains upfront. Can gift funds cover the entire […]

Every first-time buyer in Austin walks in with the same three questions, in some order: how much down payment do I actually need, what’s this going to cost me, and what am I going to mess up along the way. Fair questions. Here’s the real answer to all three. What “first-time buyer” actually unlocks You […]