What do you think about my plan? Am I crazy? (5ish minute read)

[Shane Short]

Hi everyone!

I'll try to make this not too long of a story, but I want to provide all the details and get some advice and wisdom from everyone, some rental property, but some personal as well. I'm currently twenty-six and living in the Portland, OR area. My girlfriend will be finished with school in one month and will be working in Salem 1 hour away. I work as an engineer in the semi-conductor industry currently and I'm considering going back to school for 4 years to finish my MS in Robotics to make my dreams of becoming a remote robotics engineer a reality. I would also like to build a large real estate portfolio over my lifetime so that I could potentially retire in my 40's-50's and build robotics on my own terms that help make the world a better place without having to focus on a day job.

We have been wanting to purchase a home to live in so that we at least have equity built for when we decide on where we want to settle long-term and build a family, instead of just paying rent and not at least putting that money towards some equity I can get back. Purchasing a home right now geographically and financially makes the most sense for us in Salem, OR. This way I could drive to my 4 day/wk. job in Hillsboro (mostly from home though) in around one hour (nightshift) when I'm needed AND I could go to OSU's Electrical and Computer Engineering/ MS Robotics program just south of Salem 30ish minutes.

Instead of buying a SFR and paying ~2,000/mth. (budget is max. 400k for SFR), I would like to purchase a MFR and house hack so that we only need to pay a few hundred per month to live. Now, normally when I do my practice analysis while I've been saving money to purchase investment properties, I have been doing it under the pre-tense that it would not be owner occupied, has property management, etc. which in Portland and Salem is difficult now. I'm not saying impossible, but I would need to spend a significant amount of time and creativity to find a MFR investment property that is cash flowing right now. In the last year I haven't found any that make sense.

So, what if I bought a MFR to house hack for about 4-5 years that made sense for only the amount of time I chose to live in it? That could be 4-5 years or longer if we choose. Look at my report on this home here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/... This is if it was completely rented out and not owner occupied, it shows a negative cash flow of about $100.00, I also kept rents on the low side of the other comps in the area. BUT, if me and my girlfriend lived in the 2bd/1bth unit and rented the two 3bd/2bth units, we could potentially have the principal & interest covered and live there for free and only cover CapEx/Repairs. Now this is just one example, but I've been doing a few reports and so far, there have been a lot of options to house-hack a MFR that would enable us to live for less than 1k per month, which beats 2k mortgage in an SFR. AND the best part is that after 5ish years of living there we could have around 200k equity built from the tenants and use that to put towards multiple investment properties or our future forever home OR after paying off 150-200k in equity, I could refinance the home for 30 years at what would be around 400k at that point, and I'd have a cash flowing property once I moved and filled the unit we lived in with a tenant.

What do you think? Is this a pipedream? Am I missing something blatantly obvious?

I appreciate your time.