It’s Finally Time to Buy My First Deal

[Connor Cushman]

First and foremost, thank you to this community and so many individuals that have willingly paid it forward to help me get to this point.

A little personal history..

I discovered BP 3-4 years ago and have been hungry to buy my first deal since. I was a sophomore in college with no money, a little bit of debt, and a new wife (also a sophomore in college) that I needed to support.

After grinding through 3 more years of school, I finished my business/marketing degree from a great business school in 2019 and got a job at top technology company in the Bay Area.

The best thing I did during the last 4 years though was get my UT and GA real estate licenses. I did 4 transactions as a buyers agent in my first 6 months and learned a ton.

I finally now have money saved, solid W2 income, enough knowledge and experience, and my license in the market that I’m going to buy in.

The question..

Because my work is remote, I’m looking to buy in the north Georgia market (Suwannee, Cumming, Alpharetta Area), but can’t find any market multi-family homes.

Because multi-family properties seem to be non-existent, I plan to buy a single family 2500 sq. ft home with a basement apt. that can be rented.

The numbers look something like..

Home Price - 250k-300k

Basement rental rate - $1000-$1200

PITI - $1600-$1700

Entire home rental rate - $2000 ish

I worry that I’m not getting creative enough in the way I source my own deal. When I decide to move out of the home, I worry that I’ll basically break even renting the home to one family. Could I still somehow rent the upstairs and the basement even if it’s zoned single family?

I wonder if given all of the knowledge I have at this point, could I come up with something better here? I want to start this journey on a path that most likely leads to success.

Any advice, warnings, ideas for someone who’s about to dive in?

[Georgui Kasaev]

@Connor Cushman Thank you for sharing! Depending on the area and what is around it. Have you thought about renting by the room (works best near colleges) and or renting a portion of it out to traveling nurses? Or do a combination of the two? As far as zoning is concerned. Usually, zoning determines the type of property you are able to build in a particular area e.g. Houses in SF zoning, Duplexes, and up in MF zoning, warehouses in Industrial zoning. What determines if you can or can not rent to multiple tenants are usually county laws and neighborhood covenants, for example in Athens Ga we have a law on the Clarke county books saying that you are not allowed to rent to more then two unrelated people under the same roof. But as you can imagine with Athens being a college town there are a lot more than two unrelated people living in rentals most of the time. The county does not enforce that law and frankly, I'm not sure how they would be able to. I hope that helps. Reach out to me if you have any questions!