Live-in-flip house hacking

[Austin Eschan]

Hello BP, So I have a plan and would like to know what you all think of it and if you have any advice, or catch anything that I may be missing. I am 20 years old and plan on moving out soon, I work full time and am not in school. I want to purchase my first house, and rent out one of the rooms to a buddy/tenant. My idea is buy something that can be fixed up a little bit to add some value, but nothing crazy. All the houses in my price range are only about $350-450/month for the mortgage. So my though is if I could get at least $500/month for rent I could at least break even and maybe even have a little cash flow. The area that I plan on purchasing in(Northern Kentucky) is also increasing in value quite quickly so I believe that there would be a solid amount of appreciation over the next two years due to the growth of the city(Cincinnati). After about one year I would probably try to get a Home Equity Loan and try to put a down payment on a strictly rental property with good cash flow. And after the two years I would likely sell the initial house and use all of the profits (tax free) to buy another house to live-in-flip and possibly house hack that one as well. I know I still have a lot of details and stuff I need to figure out but I just wanna hear any opinions on this plan. And if anyone is in the Cincinnati area please let me know! I'd love to meet with some people who have more experience. I'm young and wanna soak up as much information as possible!! Thanks in advance!

[James Wilcox]

@Austin Eschan your overall plan is fine but I would extend that timeline out to be realistic if you keep that HELOC step in the plan. After only owning a home for 1 year and being able to take a HELOC out on the home for it to be enough to purchase a strictly rental property would be unlikely. You would need to buy an undervalued asset and put a lot of equity into the home (good amount of renos which you stated you did not want to do with "nothing crazy") or see some massive appreciation on your home. It is 20-25% down on investment properties that are not your primary residence from a standard financial institution plus closing costs on your HELOC and closing cost on the new rental property loan.