House Hack - East Bay Area

[Pramod A.]

Hi All,

I am planning to purchase a house(SFR or Townhouse) in east bay(Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Livermore) for primary residence.

Since we don't have multifamily houses in east bay area, what is the best way to house hack in east bay.

[Frank Wong]

Hi Pramod,

It all depends on what you want to do.  Ideally, you want to find a property in your ideal neighborhood within your budget that needs some remodeling work.  This way you can add value to it over time.  You don't need to have it all done at once since this will be your primary house.   

Another option is finding a property that a flipper tried to buy and flip and got his hand caught in the cookie jar.  Since the market has softened from 06/18, flippers who bought at the wrong time and with hard money loans had to sell the house with a large loss to get rid of the property.  I think this is where the deals are. 

I just closed on a deal for a client of mine in West Oakland.  6 months ago we were looking at this flip house.  The seller wanted $760k for it.  I advise my client it was too much so we passed on it.  Last week we closed on it for $595k.  The seller had to sell because of the hard money loans and took a loss.  In this case, it's cheaper to have purchased this house complete than buying a run-down house in the same area and rehab it. 

I think you have options in the Tri-Valley.  Depending on what price point you are in the older neighborhoods of Dublin and Pleasanton offer some good house hack opportunities.