There is a version of the first-deal story that everybody tells. You fix your credit, you save the down payment, you get pre-approved, and the only thing left is finding the building. That story is missing a step.

On a three- or four-unit FHA purchase, the loan runs a second test — and it isn't about you. It's about whether the building's own rent can carry the payment. Your file can be spotless and the deal can still die on a number you never saw, produced by somebody you never met.

In this episode of the 5-Minute PRIME Podcast, host Martin Maxwell breaks down what that test actually requires, what it works out to as a share of purchase price at today's rate, and the uncomfortable thing that number turns out to be.

Tune in to learn:

• The self-sufficiency test — why FHA applies it to three- and four-unit buildings but not duplexes, and what it means that the rent from every unit counts, including the one you live in
• The bar in one number — what a building has to gross monthly, as a percentage of its price, to clear the test at a six-point-seven-one percent rate
• The rule it accidentally recreates — why that figure lands almost exactly on the oldest screen in real estate, and why that is not a compliment
• The gap that matters — the distance between the number the loan requires and the number your own analysis should require, and why clearing the first one tells you almost nothing

Are you treating a pre-approval letter as confirmation that a deal works? Before you write the offer, run the building through the numbers that decide whether it's actually a deal — not just whether it's approvable.

Subscribe now to stop confusing the lender's floor with your own bar.

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