Buying 2nd Home, House Hacking With a Family

[Travis Fisher]

I'm thinking of buying a 2nd home where we could rent out the basement of the new home as well as renting our current home. I'm really trying to make this about the numbers and not about "getting a new pretty home" but that's hard not to think about too.

Here's the plan:

1 - Buy a 6 bdrm house.  Live in 4, rent out a 2 bdrm with kitchen & separate entrance.

2 - Rent out our current 4 bdrm home.

We're looking anywhere in Salt Lake County, Utah.  As long as the house fits what we need we'll look at it.  We would have to pull about $50K of equity out of our current home to make this work.  The new house payment would be around $1500 with $700 in rent.  The old house payment would become $860 with $1300 in rent.  I know these are rough numbers but does anyone see anything wrong with this plan?  Or do you have a better plan for someone just starting out in real estate?

Thanks everyone!!

[Blair Poelman]

Be mindful of the zoning of the new place with the apt. For example, in Orem you can rent a legal an accessory apartment only when the other residence is owner occupied - both units cannot be rented unless zoned as apartment.

Some cities don't care about it, others do.