Cashflow or Appreciation for first house hack

[Seth Michael Carp]

Hi my names Seth and I'm currently a high school senior and am saving up  and learning as much as I can to house hack in about a year and a half in my sophomore year of college at the University of Oregon. So far in analyzing properties in the Eugene market I've found that cashflow can be tough to find, however I have found 1 or 2 properties that would have decent cashflow potential around 300,000 and it's a 5,2 with 1740sqft and it's in a b- area but would require a good amount of rehab, most likely new floors, potentially  some wall repairs and a new paintjob, plus other small cosmetic repairs. This might create some solid forced appreciation  and many other hoses around it are valued roughly around 400,000. I have found a second property for about 425,000 that is an a better area than the previous house as it's in an a- area also a 5,2 with 2200 sqft, this property would require far less rehab than the first property, however it would likely not cashflow nearly as well, but would likely have far better appreciation due to the area. My question: is it better to focus on appreciation or cashflow when buying your first house hacking as a 19-20 year old and do you think that the rehab work of the first house would be too much as far as extra cost on top of the roughly 10,000 down payment and the lack of experience I have in the real estate game. By the time I'm ready to buy in college I'll likely have 25,000-30,000 dollars to invest and I'll have the monthly rent from my parents to live in Eugene for college  that I could use to help me if I was cash flow negative when house hacking. Thoughts?

[Dan Guenther]

@Seth Michael Carp - I love the hustle Seth! You'll hear this over and over but I wish I started that young. I spent 5 years living in Portland and always had a good time down in Eugene! 

For your first house hack, one factor that a lot of people overlook is lowering or fully eliminating the current rent that you would be paying while renting. Even if you end up cashflow negative out of the gate you are still building equity, paying down your own loan (not someone else's), gaining investing experience, hopefully appreciation, and all of the tax benefits that come with it! 

If you haven't already, look into some Meetups around campus and see if you can connect with other investors. Let me know if you want to talk a bit more about some potential options there in Eugene, happy to help out!