So I am looking to move in 2 years or so and upgrade houses but want to keep my existing home as a rental rather than sell it. I would qualify for the loan for the new house by itself but without selling the current house that may make my income not high enough to qualify for both outright.

With the assumption that I am going to rent the original house are there ways to work around this? Have 6+ months of mortgage payments in cash for both houses or have a lot of equity in original home?

How do you know you will not qualify with both? What numbers are you using?

Pay down as much debt as you can before hand especially car notes. They eat up a bunch DTI (debt to income). Max DTI. Is 45% with some slight exceptions.

I don't know for a fact I wouldn't qualify. I'm actually just trying to plan financially ahead. I have about 500 in 2 car notes but both are going to be paid off in a few months. With the extra cash flow I was wondering what I should do with it.

Build up cash reserves/pay down current mortgage or invest for retirement if it's unlikely I will be able to convert my current primary home into a rental.

Once the cars are paid off, the only debt we have is the mortgage.

I'd save the cash for down payment. You would be surprised at how much you can qualify for.

Yep. You can qualify for a LOT more than you'd think, I have no idea how we could afford the max loan we'd qualify for.

LA you can't afford it unless you have a plan. OP has to qualify with no rental income; worst case. But real cash flow he knows his 1200 mortgage Paynent will be covered by a 1500 lease.

On my books it looks bad but on the ground he is fine.