Inspiring Househacker Northeast Dallas

[Michael Akai]

Hello All,

I am an inspiring buy and hold investor in the Northeast Dallas area and I'm looking for some advice regarding the purchase of my first rental investment property.

A rough outline of my house hacking strategy is as follows.

• Purchase a duplex with a 3.5% FHA loan
•  Put a portion of my monthly savings each month to upgrading/modernizing my half of the duplex while renting the other half then move into the other half after a year or so and repeat.
• Once both halves of the duplex are repaired to the market standard of the higher renting comps in the area, either used the forced appreciation/equity to either take out a HELOC or do a cash-out refinance to fund my next venture.
  
•  Rinse and repeat.

I have been working with an REA for the last few months so that I could monitor the housing market in the collin county area via the MLS. I really like this area because of the job pull with company headquarters like State Farm and Texas Instruments, and because of the highly sought out public school districts in the area. But I've been coming across some consistent problems in my analysis of these properties and am hoping that someone experienced in this area could provide some insight.

1. Price to rent ratios rarely meet the 1% rule and Property Taxes and PMI's eat away at monthly cash flow, so have any of you found neighborhoods with favorable numbers in these categories?
2. MLS contains few Multifamily units (as expected when compared to the SFR market). Are there any wholesalers in the area who specialize in multifamily units that are willing to connect?
3. Branching off from my second point of there being a small multifamily market, I have been looking into ways to replicate this plan with a single-family unit where I stay for a year or so while upgrading the property to add value but the issues tight cashflow margins (assuming I rent out the property after a year) still persist as well as limited "Good deals" on the MLS.

I am open to any and all feedback, suggestions, and/or guidance regarding my current plan. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

[Michael Akai]

I have been using rentometer in parallel with Zillow and MLS data to get my rental comps but didn't think to use it for 1 bedroom comps, that a good idea.

My area has a healthy mix of both state and community colleges which could provide the benefit of demand for single room rentals from an audience that is already used to sharing common spaces so definitely worth looking into. But the immediate future of in-class instruction is a bit uncertain right now for obvious reasons.

Thanks for the house hacking strategy plug and for your willingness to take the time to respond to my original post. Best of luck in your future endeavors.