Should your first house hack cash flow or just save you money?

[Christopher Smith]

Hey everyone. My wife and I have been prepairing to buy our first multifamily for the past couple years. We've read Brandons books multiple times plus dozens of others and feel that there's nothing left to do besides jump in. We live in an expensive area and expect a 4 unit property to cost somwhere in the 300-400ks. Our plan is to get into a 4 unit with an FHA loan with a 3.5% down payment (which we have) and let the tennants pay down the morgage. Then do it again in a couple years with another property (house hack). This is the quickest way for us to get into investment real estate with the amount of income we have.

My question is this: We've analyzed several deals in our target area and found that if we're going to live in one of the units, it causes the property to not cash flow. Usually only by $100-$200 a month but no matter how we spin it, we cant seem to get it to work. Is that typical for a house hack appraoch? Are our expectations too high? Or are we passing up perfectly healthy deals? 

Even if we bought one of these properties and paid $100-$200/mo towards the mortgage, it'd still be better than throwing our money away to rent every month. ....right? Or should we keep waiting and looking for that one deal that will break even - even while we're one of the tennants?