“So one could keep buying live in 4-plex’s over and over without going 35% down?”

according to my loan broker at the time, 1 year of owner occupancy was reasonable before buying the next owner-occ property – I followed this guideline and moved numerous times over the years – on at least one of the properties I provided the lender with a letter explaining why I was moving out of one owner-occ property and buying another one in less than a year – something along the lines of, “I thought I would enjoy living close to the beach but found the traffic and noise unbearable”

in hindsight I don’t think anyone really cared – the bubble was in full swing – lenders just wanted to close loans – evidently even dead people were getting loans so I was a pretty good candidate for another mortgage (being non-dead)

“The guy I was talking to said that there was 100% down”

do you mean 100% of the rental income applying toward the loan? I’m not aware of any loans like that – I was happy to get 75%

I vaguely remember reading that the percentage has dropped to 50%

“Even at 20% down I would have to go hard money”

I always assume that hard money loans will be at least 18% interest – hard to imagine any property penciling out with that kind of loan

“anything would pencil until one to two years from now”

I expect rents in San Diego to drop from here – the price of multi-unit property is based on rents so I’m not interested in buying anything until I see what rents do – the soonest I will buy anything is 2011/12 and more likely 2014

“Do you know any brokers that are good at creative deals?”

look at your situation from the broker/lender’s perspective – no money down on a multi-unit property for somebody who (I assume) has never been a landlord – if you were in their shoes, how excited would you be to help you?