The Code To Winning - FIRST TIME HOME BUYER GUIDE 2026: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW || KYLIE BRENNING || EPISODE 080

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Kylie Brenning has been active in the real estate industry since 2018, starting her career in commercial real estate development before transitioning into lending in 2022. That foundation gives her a unique, well-rounded perspective on both the building and financing side of real estate. As a Mortgage Broker, Kylie works across both residential and commercial lending, leveraging strong relationships with a wide network of banks and lending institutions. Her approach is solution-focused—no matter how niche the deal or complex the situation, she believes there is always a loan product or strategy that can make it work. Beyond her work in lending, Kylie serves as the President of E.P.I.C.C. (Empowering Professionals In Clark County), a nonprofit dedicated to giving back through meaningful networking, community-driven events, and supporting local charities and small businesses throughout the Pacific Northwest. In this episode, we break down the realities of lending in today’s market—from creative financing strategies to how AI is shaping the future of mortgage brokering. Whether you’re a first-time buyer, investor, or entrepreneur, this conversation is packed with practical insights on navigating credit, income, and opportunity in real estate. 🎙️ Episode Timestamps  0:00 Introduction  3:45 What is Creative Finance?  7:32 DSCR loan , 0 Income Documentation?  12:34 How important is credit score?  16:41 Income vs Credit score  19:50 AI integration as Mortgage Broker  21:35 No Credit vs Bad Credit ?  26:15 Interests Rates & When To Buy ? 

I love first-time homebuyers too. I mean, I like my investors. I love working with them. They're always fired up. They've got great energy. But those first-time homebuyers, when they get in, they don't think that they could afford a house, or they think that they can't,

and they have something that's actually theirs. They're locking in their price of shelter for their life, basically, right? There's nothing better than that. I actually just had a client text me last night. She needed her partner to co-sign with her to afford this house that they really, really want. A partner had no credit score at all.

So we had her add him on as an authorized user to her oldest credit. card so he's getting that history right and he's also getting to feed kind of off of her credit score and he opened up his own and she texted me last night now he has a 762 credit score and that was a week and a half ago is when we started that process I've helped bad credit too another super great success story I've worked with this couple a couple of times help them purchase investment properties refinanced their primary residents to get that cash to buy their

next like dream house the wife her credit score was kind of bringing things down a little bit and I was looking at it and I was like well you've got this collection and it was like five hundred dollars I'm like you guys have five hundred dollars so what we do instead is we call the company that has the debt and we say okay we'll pay you the five hundred dollars but we want you to delete it you want to pay for a delete so then it's like it never happened winning to me means being healthy feeling good about what you do and who you surround yourself with the code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow today

actually have a special guest, which came literally all the way from Vancouver, Washington, not Vancouver, Canada, not Washington, D.C., but Vancouver, Washington, right here in Cincinnati Las Vegas. We're going to talk a bit more about being a mortgage broker, what that actually means, DSCR loans. We're going to talk about creative finance. So if you're curious in those specific topics, how to end up purchasing a property while still keeping the exact same rate at the same time as well. All these topics we're going to kind of dissect go in depth with this well. So if you're curious and learning a bit more about those, this is the episode for you. We have a special lady, Kylie Brennan. I was going to break it down for us.

Welcome. Thank you very much for joining us. How are you doing? I'm wonderful. Thank you for having me. Awesome stuff. How have you enjoyed the event so far? Oh, it's been really awesome. I mean, such great speakers. We just heard Ed My Left this morning. He definitely tears on those heartstrings for sure. How to walk, walk away and dab my eyes a little bit. I was next to you and like, you know, it's so crazy. Asi was going so much in depth and just, you know, being so raw, I'm like, yo, I've had the owner. I'm feeling this and I look like next you. See, like, you're just still tearing up over there. And like, it's dead silent. What's crazy

is that throughout like the backstage. I've been there. And today was the first time like in that moment where it was like you could feel like a pen drop because of just just how inspiring the whole message was. And I mean, I caught you tearing up there. Yeah. No, I mean, what do you start thinking? his thoughts on, don't think about my family, think about your family. You know, like your family is what's going to push you to do what you're capable of, you know, to push you towards your own greatness or whatever it is that you're meant to do. That's what got me because I love my family. So I feel like they are at the root of why we do the things, you know.

I love it. It's like your why, if your why is bigger than your why not, and it starts changing your perspective, when you realize actually hang on, there's something far greater than myself. Yeah. You know? It is. Yeah.

So anyway, I'm grateful for you coming on topic. I'm sorry, I took away from lunch, but when I see the opportunity, I saw Kaila, I'm like, listen, Kylie, we have to do this thing. So I'm grateful for joining on set. Can you just talk a bit more? I'm very curious about the topic of creative finance. What does that actually even mean? Well, I mean, so I'm a mortgage broker.

So normal finance, you go to the bank or you come to your broker, you get your loan. Creative finance is anything that's kind of outside of that normal. realm or like the normal standard 30-day real estate escrow, all of those things. We're talking like taking over existing contracts. We're talking about, you know, using seller finance to pay for your down payment. All of those things kind of fall into the category of creative finance. Anything that's outside of the normal standard loan. Okay. And so how, when you say you keep the exact same rate, obviously we know that rates have been going up, the trajectory has been happening for the last few years as well. When I take over someone's loan, let's say they've been like they had at home for

about like 12 years, how do I keep the exact same rate that they had? There's a couple ways you can go about that. So if you're dealing with somebody who's got a government loan, so like an FHA or a VA loan, you can assume that loan. So you go to the bank, you qualify for that loan through the bank, and you assume that person's loan and you get to keep their really low interest rate. The other way, So if you've got a different kind of loan on the property, like a conventional or, you know, a non-qualified mortgage on that property, you can do a transaction type that's called a sub-to or a subject to, which means that you're purchasing that property subject to the existing lien or existing loan. And that requires a certain type of paperwork. You want to make sure all that's dialed in, you know, legal-wise. But essentially, you get to take over that person's mortgage.

Typically, the mortgage company is none the wiser. You just continue to make that monthly payment as normal. So when you take over there, you can take over someone's 3% FHA loan? That's a suit. Yes, so you can assume the loan, which is like goes through the bank and goes through all the normal avenues. A subject two still goes through title and escrow. So the title, the property, everything will still go into your name. But the loan portion stays with the existing mortgage company.

and you just kind of take over that mortgage payment and you continue to pay it as if you were the seller. And I've often heard that you get a lot, especially within social media, that people can do a zero down payment to get a home. Obviously, there are various components that are involved in this and try and make sure people would actually qualify for that. How can somebody today wanting to buy their first home

qualify for a zero percent? I mean, zero down. There's lots of different programs that are available for that. Some of them are going to be state-specific. some of them have income caps. So one of the things that we kind of typically look at is what's going to give you the best interest rate based on your scenario. So, okay, you've got this credit score, I've got this income,

and we will match you up to a product that will work for you. So some of these you have to be below a certain AMI, which is your area median income to qualify for it. And then some of them don't have any income caps at all. Some of them have higher credit score requirements than a standard loan. It just kind of depends what's in your area and that's kind of where you go to a mortgage broker to find those options for you We do the shopping for you essentially Oh wow. Yeah, I know we spoke about the the Morby method and all that kind of stuff

But the reason I've been following Pace a lot there was a very inspiring story of the homeless lady that ended up getting their Her first property but obviously there's a lot of components like I said that go into that Which kind of segues because I'm very curious about this D S C R loan. First of all, this requires zero income. Zero income documentation. Oh, gosh, zero income documentation. So doesn't mean you must door that. Just have like $10 coming in for the day. Like, no, no, no income. I can get a home. Can let me rephrase that? D.S.C.R loan. This requires zero income documentation. However, you can end up using some of your

payment history for rent, right? How does that actually work? So the DSCR stands for debt service coverage ratio. And this is technically a commercial loan that we use for a lot of investors. You can get an investment loan, like a conventional investment loan, right, 20% down, your standard, all the things. And they're going to want to see your income documentation and make sure that that new house payment fits within your DTI or your debt to income ratio. But with a DSCR, all we have to do is have an appraiser go out. and we use that appraiser's potential rental income number to help you qualify for the loan.

So if we've got this loan amount and, you know, say the mortgage is going to be $2,000 a month, if we have the appraiser go out there and they say, hey, yeah, this property is going to rent for $2,500 a month, that qualifies you for the mortgage. I don't need to see how much you make per year. The property itself is going to cash flow. That's how you get your loan. Interesting. What are the components do they look at when you're trying to qualify for this?

So I mean, you kind of want to have some reserves. Typically, you've got to have 15 to 20% down. In some more expensive markets, you have to put a little bit more down in order for those numbers to make sense, right? The biggest thing that we also look at is going to be your credit score. You want to have a good credit score. One of the cool parts about this loan, though, is you can close it in an LLC. So it doesn't need to close or reflect on your personal credit. You can close it in your business's name, which, you know, really helps a lot of people.

you kind of get to a certain point after you've acquired certain amount of properties, your debt to income is maxed out. You know, you can't. With your income, you can't buy anymore. But with a DSCR, that alleviates all those problems. I want to look at your income. And you can do higher unit counts on those too. I mean, we can go up to like 10 units on those.

So you can do multifamily. It's a great way to get into multifamily. What's the craziest situation where somebody that potentially on paper was more unlikely to not qualify and end up qualifying and purchasing their first home. Gosh, so I deal with a lot of like independent business owners. And, you know, nobody likes paying the tax, man. I don't like paying taxes. So they might be making a lot of money yearly, right?

But on their taxes, they've got a great CPA. They have a great tax professional. They're making it look like they're not making like anything, right? But they want to buy a investment property. Well, on paper, you don't make a great. enough money to afford that, sir, but with the DSCR, it doesn't matter. Those are the situations that I use that in. I also really like DSCRs. We can also do that with people with an ITIN. So somebody that doesn't have a social security number, maybe they only have an individual

tax identification number. So I'm helping, you know, other people get into housing or like get into, you know, building their wealth that normally they wouldn't have the opportunity to do that. Interesting. Super cool. That is awesome. Yeah. And then what's the, what's the percentage in your or guesstimate or perhaps let me know, what's the percentage of how many people usually do qualify for these kind of loans? Is it high-end or is it low-end? It's pretty high. I mean, you can tell right off the bat,

as long as you know what market you're working in. Like sometimes when somebody's like, oh, I want to buy one in California, I'm like, all right, you're probably going to have to have more down, right? You don't have to have maybe 30% down instead of the standard 20 in order to make the monthly mortgage match the monthly rent. So as soon as we know what market we're working in and, you know, Kind of what like another thing that can affect it is also your insurance.

So we've been seeing that a lot recently where insurance rates are super, super high. That goes in towards your total monthly payment, right? So as long as you're in an area where the insurance isn't insane and that you're putting a decent amount down and the rents are good and you've got a good credit score, we pretty much know that it's good to go. Okay. That's how we qualify you. No, that's awesome.

I know that what separates you, obviously with the trade of finance, but what separates you from other mortgage brokers? I think honestly just the creative finance knowledge and the fact that we've been doing so many of these kinds of loans. I mean, me and my team, we're pumping out 20 to 30 of these every single month. We've got the experience, we've got the team behind us. We've got a processor and she is amazing. Like, she is just, she's so good.

We have a pre-approval specialist handling things like on the front end. We just have a seamless process, and we all work so well together. So I think when you get one person, you're actually getting a team, and that's what sets us apart. I love that. Ben, would you say with the people that usually approach you, what's the lowest credit school you've ever worked with that actually qualified for that?

Is that qualified for it? Yeah. Gosh, the one that, usually they're all right around like 7, 720 is your sweet spot. The lowest one that I've actually seen that I've gotten it to go through was probably six. I think it was like 640, like 640 probably. Because these are investment loans, so you want to have a little bit higher credit score. You know, if you're going after your first primary residence,

I mean, I've seen credit scores as little as like 580. If it's a primary residence, we can get away with a little bit more. There's more programs. But for the investment loans, you're probably going to want to have a 700 in order to get the best pricing to, you know, make the best deal for you. It makes perfect sense. That does make sense.

The reason I'm asking this, I've done solar, well, I did solar in the Bay Area for... I'm just kidding. Whenever we get a house with a solar loan on it, I'm like, oh, brother. So I guess you hate the people like myself, but... No, sometimes they're fine. Like, the companies are great and they let you assume it, but sometimes they're a real...

No, because you're right. At the end of the day, these solar deals were like 30 years, 25 plus years as well. And I mean, I sold one lady, Cripetino. She was literally right next to the... Apple headquarters. That was one of my highest commission, but her sale for the solar system was adding additional panels on her existing panels. And it was, I think, close to like 120,000 because she had like, I think, 80 additional. She had a mansion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She had a mansion. Okay, I'm like, how many panels are there? It was amazing because I didn't even sell her.

Like, we just had a fat chat for like two, three hours. It's just like, like, anyway, so where do I sign? Like, I need to get more panels. I'm like, we love customers like that. right here. But, you know, that was a fat commission. That was a good one. I think there was like probably 30% of my commission in that three-year period. I don't know. Sorry, three-month period.

Because I did it a whole year, but in the summertime, like, you usually get your fat ones because that's when everyone's like bills going all higher as well. So, you know, that was a good one. But my point in that, when people are usually stuck within solar and get so many, like, does that affect, like how the creative finance and all that kind of stuff? It can. solar panels typically put on a secondary lien on the property, right? So when you go to sell the property, depending on the buyer, what kind of financing or a loan they're trying to get,

that buyer has to probably assume that solar loan or the seller has to pay off the loan when they sell the house, which dips into their equity, and nobody likes that, you know? So it does affect it. It just every, it's situational, but from what I've seen, most people kind of like assume that solar panel loan, unless it's a little bit smaller. Up in like Washington, Oregon, our solar panel bills are typically around like 20, 25K, not like 120, but.

No, that's perfect. But then it can't affect it. What do you say for somebody out there that wants to buy their first home, not even investment home, like their own residential property for themselves and their family? Maybe they're finishing college. Maybe they are solo entrepreneurs. Maybe they just like entrepreneurs by themselves. What's the first few steps they need to focus on right now?

before they come and approach you to prepare it a little better. Honestly, I tell people to just approach me whenever you have questions. Because when you're feeling out of mortgage loan application, all you're doing is inquiring about information. You're not signing on the dotted line. You're not doing anything like that. We always do a soft credit pull first. So that gives me an insight into what we're working with.

I can tell you what debt to pay off, where what's going to give you your biggest bang for your buck, if we need to work on anything here, or just an income evaluation, be like, okay, at this point, what you're making versus what your monthly bills are, this is what you can afford. So I would say if you're thinking about buying a home, just get in contact with your mortgage broker because they're going to be able to coach you better than you can coach yourself. Okay, awesome.

And then what's often the most important thing they look at is a credit score, is it income? I know they both can in hand. They really like kind of like are both crucial and important. But what would you say is probably the most important from those two? Gosh. Well, I mean, you can't get the house without the credit score, but income is what's going to drive how much you can afford, right? Income and also your debts.

Like, if you're trying to buy a house, don't go get that $1,000 car payment. You can do that after you close. After you close, you can do whatever you want. But before that, income definitely is going to drive what kind of house you're going to get. And what's the process? How long does it take? If I come to you right now and I qualify,

and I see a nice home in Richfield. For, arguably, $450,000. I don't know what are the price going out there, but what's the step from when I end up qualifying and I get it, how long does it take for me to actually get the keys and move in? So a typical escrow is going to be 30 days,

so you'll come to us hopefully before you want to put an offer in. I mean, we get those calls too. It'll be a Saturday night, a realtor call and be like, I need you to pre-approval. my client right now and I'll be like after dinner and we'll still do it obviously but once you get into contract it's about 30 days as a standard escrow sometimes you have to have a little bit of an extension especially as banks are getting busier you know interest rates have kind of been declining lately people are looking into refinancing banks are getting busier our turn times are longer

and what a turn time is is when we turn in the paperwork to an underwriter they take a couple days to review the things, make sure they don't have any other additional questions, or they come back with things that they want additionally, call those conditions. Those turn times are longer, and it's just taking a little bit longer. Appraisers get busier, takes them a little bit more time to get out there and appraised property, but a standard is 30 days. That's not bad. 30 days is relatively good.

I think 30 days is a good number. I was expecting it to be a little longer as well, so that's everything is solved and you get the keys and you move in. It's relatively decent. I have noticed in like Midwest and like other parts of the country, it is a little bit longer. They're a little bit more like lax. Like I feel like they're all like on Hawaiian time. Like I'm like hounding this like escrow officer.

Like I'm like, hey, where's this? Where's this? And they're like, it'll be there. And I'm like, when? They're a little bit more lax some parts of the country. But where we are, it's about 30 days. And what's the most rewarding thing from what you do? What's the most exciting thing?

What keeps you going? Besides your family because I saw that after today. He's just on my crocodile tears. The thing that keeps me going is getting, I love first-time homebuyers too. I mean, I like my investors. I love working with them. They're always fired up. They've got great energy.

But those first-time homebuyers, when they get in, they don't think that they could afford a house or, like, they think that they can't. Like, they think that the barrier to entry is so much larger than what it actually is. And when they get those keys and they have something that's actually theirs, like, they're locking in their price of shelter for their life, basically, right? there's nothing better than that. How are you guys incorporating artificial intelligence? Because we've seen the vast majority of AI just rolling out.

And I've seen when people have been looking at like homes, like 3D, 4D models of how your home can look like and changing interior. I know your interior design as well. Yeah, I went to school for interior design. I don't really use that degree. I offer it to my clients. Like I get discounts on furniture and stuff.

I'm like, yeah, here. You know what that 20% off that pottery barn couch? It's kind of a nice little extra bonus. But gosh, the 3D modeling is so crazy and it's so cool. And like, I've purchased a couple homes myself and it makes it so much nicer, like when you're looking and everything. You can do that with your phone, like the iPhone. You can just literally make it and it's so cool. But as a mortgage broker, AI, we are implementing it.

Helps us with social media for sure and some other things there. There are other products that can read financial statements such as like W-2s or 1099s. And the idea is that we should be able to just upload those documents. documents into this AI program and it'll tell us all the things that we need to know. But from what I've experienced is it's still kind of in the earlier stages for that purpose and I still need to go back and double check all of those things. So it's getting there for mortgage, but it still requires that human touch. Powerful.

Then that's awesome to you. I really like that. And I think it's so misunderstood what a mortgage broker is. And sometimes what I realized as well when I spoke about solar, we had a few programs. that help people like get a higher credit, which was about like three, four months, depending on how serious they were, where they can still make a certain payment. We're working with like third-party vendors as well. Do you guys have programs that allow people to fix maybe getting enough of their payments on record

or even like to increase their credits? Because I know there's all these credit repairs online where it can take like two days or like something's a little sketch. I'm really good at that. I actually just had a client text me last night. We went to get a Tira Bissue for dinner, but after that way, I got a text message. She needed her partner to co-sign with her to afford this house that they really,

really want. And coincidentally, this house has solar panels on it. So it's adding, they're going to assume that. So it's adding to that monthly payment that we've got to have enough income for. So she has her partner who's wanting to co-sign. Partner had no credit score at all. So I was like, no credit is a lot easier to fix than bad credit. So we had her add him on as an authorized user to her oldest credit card.

So he's getting that history, right? And he's also getting to feed kind of off of her credit score. And he opened up his own. And she texted me last night, now he has a 762 credit score. And that was a week and a half ago is when we started that process. The secret is no credit is better than bad credit. I've helped bad credit too. Another super great success story.

I've worked with this couple, a couple of times. help them purchase investment properties, refinanced their primary residents to get that cash to buy their next dream house. And the wife, her credit score, was kind of bringing things down a little bit. And I was looking at it. And I was like, well, you've got this collection. And it was like, $500. I'm like, you guys have $500. But I was like, don't just pay it. Because if you just pay off a collection, what it does is it makes that recent activity on your credit report. And so it kind of like brings that old, you know, that old collection, it brings it to the top.

We don't want that. So what we do instead is we call the company that has the debt, and we say, okay, we'll pay you the $500, but we want you to delete it. You want to pay for a delete. So then it's like it never happened. Interesting. And I took her from like a $680 to like a $7.40 in two days.

That makes sense. I've often seen that. I often see a lady, it's like, do not pay, do not pay collections, do not pay your, I'm like, what do you mean? But it makes sense what you're saying, because now by calling them directly, there's no third party in between

and they can remove it off your record as well. And I mean, I don't know everything. I do, we do have a gal in Vancouver. She's based out of there, and she's not like a normal credit repair. She does a really, really good job. So like if it's like a really, a lot of things or I'm like, I don't see anything

that I can just do overnight to help you. Sometimes I will recommend a credit repair company, but that's why if you're thinking about buying a house, it's never too soon to just talk to somebody because some of these easy things could fix your credit overnight, whereas you could take months to try and figure it out on your own. Do you recommend it though? What? Do you recommend that people

go for credit repairs and those third-party people that can help you repair your credit? Are those legit? Only certain ones. There are credit repair companies that I don't really like, but my gal in Vancouver, I like her. I like her a lot. Her name is Ivory and her company is called Insight Strategies, and she does a really great job. And she's reasonably priced, too.

Okay, awesome. No, that's what I just had. I was very curious about that because I feel like I've seen so many people that actually have the funding where they're making six, they're making a right, six figures, sometimes seven, but again, they have a few things that are ruining it. Sometimes it may be like bankrupts that aren't even aware of or there may be something within the record.

I had a friend of mine who's got like a seven seven seven seven in right now, but there was something on his record that he wasn't aware of from college where there was like a T-Mobile thing. And he's like, why does my credit keep going down? And then there was a T-Mobile thing where usually, you know, sometimes you get about six people as apartment mates and one person make the payment. And now he's saying what's ruining this stuff. But even though it's not the main thing, but they use his credit.

And so some people aren't even aware until they download Xpeer. They're like, what the heck? This is from 2017, you know? So I couldn't agree more. Definitely monitor your credit. I mean, there's free ways to do it. Credit Karma or there's lots of websites to do that with, right? So definitely recommend that.

If you are wanting to purchase a house anytime within, you know, then not even near future, at any point in your life, get on it ahead of time. What advice you to give somebody right now with interest rates increasing? The housing market is scary. They want to try and rent and they've been hoping for this crash from 2015, but this crash ain't crashing. What advice you give somebody right now wanting to buy a home? Talk to somebody who is an expert in your market. I don't think we're going to experience a huge crash.

I mean, where I'm from, we are under as far as housing. We still have builders building houses, and they're getting sucked up. Like, we're under as far as how many houses we need. That's not every single market, though. Interest rates, we've kind of seen them start to come down just a little bit. There's a lot of people that are on the sidelines right now waiting for those interest rates to get to sub, you know, 5%. I don't know how long that's going to take, but as soon as that happens, or even if we go down like another half a percent,

it's going to bring so many people off the bench and into the market that it's going to drive some of these prices back up again. So even if you purchase a house now and you have a slightly higher interest rate, you are going to get that house for a better purchase price. And then when the interest rates do come down, you'll just refinance your mortgage and you'll have the same interest rate too. Powerful. Wow, Kylie.

I can't believe I just have had you for 45 minutes. I wanted to go for another 45 minutes, but I don't want Azure killing me. So usually because... She's going to be a treat. You know, obviously it's the coat to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. I often believe winning is so different for everyone.

And Ed Milet just obviously just freaking pierced into the very soul. I know. For Kylie Brennan, what does the term winning mean for you? Winning to me means being healthy and happy. and just being overall, like, fulfilled in your own life. Feeling good about what you do and who you surround yourself with. That's a Barack Obama mic drop moment right there. Health is wealth.

All right, Kylie. If you could let us know a way to get a hold of you, if people want to try and, like, learn about mortgage broking, if they want to want to consulting, if they want to try and buy a home, if they want to connect with you on Instagram. Absolutely, yep. My Instagram is Kylie Dream Loans.

And that's how you can contact me. Send me a message about whatever you guys have questions on. She's even more amazing in person, by the way. So the coach winning insight you need to, Dave to seize the world tomorrow. Kylie Burning, great pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you.