how much of a down payment to live off of 35k annual

[Brad Pietrzak]

between me and my sweetheart we make enough to easily handle a multifamily property as a house hack even a single family home. but that is not what we want to do. what we want to do is put a large enough down payment on a duplex so that we can comftorably live off of her 35k annual salary and anything as I make as a engineer I can just invest for our future. we have only rented as of now. I am unfamiliar with the costs of homeownership. I have looked up some numbers and have a idea of how large of a down payment we would need to put. I wanted to get another opinion first. So duplexes in a c class area here run about 130 to 150k I could rent the one side as long as it is in good condition for around 8 to 900. I was thinking we should throw around 100k down that should give us a morgage taxes and insurance around 500 monthly enough to raise a family on her income alone all while not having to count on the rent so we can just treat it as a bonus and use it for more investing. Would you say that would be a large enough down payment? Or should I just buy it outright. I really am sorry if I sound stupid with this post. I just value multiple opinions before we move forward

[Jonathan Holmes]

The idea of using leverage to purchase real estate is to allow yourself to own more than you can afford and let the asset pay itself off. There is also nothing wrong with low risk cash investing though the return is much lower. You are looking for a middle ground which I’m not sure is worth the hassle.

With that same 100k you could buy two duplexes with 25% down and one more with a owner occupied loan and still have cash left over. That would give you 5 units to rent and 1 to live in. The cash on cash return will be astronomically better.

And assuming you purchased these properties at a price point that would allow 200 dollars a month in cash flow you would be putting more in your pocket than the single nearly paid off unit. It would only get better at 10, 20 or 30 years out as the loans pay down.

If you aren’t interested in carrying mortgages which is reasonable and understandable I would go around making low all cash offers without contingencies and try to get a deal.

Depending on your market it is not unreasonable to think if you are patient and put offers on enough properties you could pick one of the low end ones for 100k cash.