A dual purpose first purchase, aka house hacking.

[Dan Graney]

I have been renting for many years and from what I have been learning on BP it sounds like buying a multi family property and living in it is a great way to get started in real estate investing and find a new place to live.

So I have been looking for multifamily properties in the town that I want to live in, Lapeer Michigan. I chose lapeer because it is centrally located between my 3 young adult children.

The town seems to be growing in some ways because they are constantly adding new restaurants and retail stores. However the population age must have shifted because they recently combined our two High Schools into one. 

There is another town close to me, Davison Michigan that has a similar story and would also be a possible location.

I have found a few multi-family properties for sale but so far nothing that really seems like a deal. I have ran a couple of them through the calculators and would have to offer a lot less than asking price to get them to cash flow. Which I guess is and reasonable thing to do.

One of the problems with all of these houses is that they are all quite old, like early 1900's. The other thing is that the one that looked the most promising is fully rented out in has had the same good tennants living there for 5 plus years.

There are only 8 multifamily properties in these two towns that I can find online. So I'm going to start driving and exploring other ways to find them but would appreciate some advice.

How old is too old if a building is well kept up?

Where or other sources to find the kind of property I am looking for?

What is a reasonable cash flow per door for a house hack?