Investment property, financing, and related things...

This is kind of applicable to this thread category. So I'm looking at getting an investment property that has a dock, retail store, and apartment units on top. I've never gotten involved in business mortgages, etc., just personal residence.

I'm curious what to expect and if you all out there own/rent/lease your business space and what you think makes most sense.

I'd like to put my shop in the store space and redo the upper floors as residential apartments. I did some math and the rental income would pay for the building, give me a "free" store space, and have extra money left over.

A few people have said expect 20%-30% down which I have but I don't have stellar credit because I use personal debt instruments to finance my business mostly because it was way easier to do in the first few years of being in business. Of course that hurts my personal credit. I thought about converting personal debt to business debt to help my score but didn't want to jump the gun since I'm looking at financing for the property and I've heard that too many inquiries into your credit reports can actually hurt your score in the short run. I think the payments are higher too on investment property because they're shorter terms, like 10 or 15 years.

Anyway, I just was curious what you folks do in these matters.