Central A/C or Window Units

[Account Closed]

Hey everyone,

My name is Joe, I'm 24 years old, was in the military for 5 years, and with the money I saved up I bought my first house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the third house I looked at, but between myself and my agent we were certain it was a good deal and turned out to be. 

I purchased it for $90k with a 30 year loan to maximize cash flow. The mortgage will be $640 / month and rent will be $550 / room.  I will be living in one room and be renting out the other 3 bedrooms.  I close on July 10, and plan on having my roommates (friends) move in August first.  There are no window units so I plan on spending $4k on central A/C, $300 on a new oven (broken), and will most likely be painting all of the bedrooms.  The house is in pretty good shape, but I just have no idea where to start adding value to it.  I'm a full time student making $3300 / month through the GI Bill and would like to start saving for my next investment property, but also start improving the house as I am living in it.  

I am looking for good recommendations of books or advice for a systematic approach on how to handle my first house. I am more than likely going to be going the BRRR route.

Thanks guys, hopefully this wasn't too bad for my first post.

I will be asking for advice, being my first real estate deal, as I have mixed emotions hoping everything will be okay. I honestly don't really know where to begin, but I will begin asking a couple questions.

[Roy N.]

@Account Closed

Congratulations and welcome.

Window AC units are a cheaper up-front capital cost, but are less efficient (both operationally and in their installation) and are hard on the windows themselves.

If you already have forced-air heating, you can readily find solutions whereby an heat exchange core is installed directly in the plenum of your existing air-handler and connected to an outside compressor to provide either AC only or both heating and cooling (heat pump).   If your air-handler is older, you may want to contemplate installing a new handler (with a brushless, DC blower) as it will be far more energy efficient.  Changing the air handler or installing a core in the plenum is also the time to clean the existing ductwork and seal all leaky joints that can be accessed.

If you do not already have forced-air in the house, then ductless AC or heat pumps are worth a look.  You can install either multiple smaller systems or a larger, multi-headed (multi-zoned) system.

Regardless of the heating or cooling system you install, your biggest bang-4-buck will come from air-sealing and improving the building envelope ... this can be a simple as replacing weather stripping on doors and windows and caulking trim to adding additional insulation to the exterior (or interior) of the wall assemblies / attic space and replacing windows and doors.

You should probably start with having an energy model {aka heat loss analysis} performed on your house which will identify the current energy losses and the measures you can take to improve the performance.