House hacking

[Jacob Sharp]

My co-worker has almost completely convinced me that the following strategy is the holy grail of building a real estate portfolio over time.  

My plan is this, buy another house that has good rental potential and move into as an owner occupied unit.  Live there for a year, and repeat.  I would be using a home equity loan on my current primary residence for the initial down payment and then paying that down over the course of the 12+ months I am in the new (to me) home.  After 12+ months I would repeat the process, each time renting out the property that I was leaving.  I currently live in a home that is worth about $250k and I am looking at higher margin rentals in the $100k - $125k as I get started with this strategy.  The plan would be to do this as long as my wife could stand it and then settle down with more permanent digs.  The idea with doing this is that my initial cash outlay stays low, around 5% of the purchase price for owner occupied financing.  After my wife says enough is enough, then I would start to do more traditional real estate investing where I would have to come up with a much larger 25% down payment for my purchases.  

I would plan to stay local, probably limiting my movement to the current school district I live in so my kids wouldn't be school hopping while all this is going on over the next 4, 5, 6 years or however long it takes to run its course.  

Is this strategy nuts?  Am I missing anything?  Thanks!

[Stephen S.]

You remind me of a funny story -

A friend of my then-Realtor was doing that same thing: buying as occupant, and the later renting the property and buying another as 'the occupant'. His answer to "why are you doing this" was always the same: "My wife and I are separating so now I need a separate house for myself." My Realtor told me that they would file for a separation and use that documentation if the lender asked for it.

Then after settlement they would always somehow or other make up and move back in together in the latest house. <g>

I don't know how many he ended up with but more than a half dozen. I think his plan was to sell one house to pay for each child's college tuition, and then sell the remainder to fund his retirement. I'm not sure how the plan actually went for hime but it was a standard joke around the office: Oppps; Len is breaking up with Jill . . . . again. <g>

stephen
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posted by @Bill Gulley:

It's how I started.

Understand that a HELOC is not a good source of long term financing, they have too many call features and your moving out could mean trouble.

You will also find that lenders aren't stupid. I lived in a property and moved on, I could justify moving up and out from one to another. I was also in the Army, moving around is part of the military life. If you're staying in the same location, it won't be long before the mender sees through your plan of buying rentals as an owner occupied, while you may technically be meeting the requirements, your intentions will be clear. You'll get cut off and offered non-owner occupied products.

You'll need to justify why you moved and kept the past property. If you begin with a 2bdr then go to a 3, that might fly, but moving down the street a year later probably won't fly. :)