House Hacking a Duplex for beginners

[Justin Schrout]

Hello all!

I just finished reading the Bigger Pockets "The Book on Rental Property Investing". I thought it was a great intro to the topic, and now I'm looking to get way more in depth into analyzing deals for finding a potential rental property. I've signed up for a few webinars and I'm super interested in learning more!

A quick little background about myself - I recently accepted a new job in Northern Virginia, so I'm looking to house hack my way into my first rental property. I start around mid-October. One interesting thing I have discovered is that it is pretty hard to find a multi family unit in Northern Virginia! 

The first piece of advice I'm looking for: Would it be advisable to attempt to switch jobs while at the same time buying a house? Should I sign a lease and save up for a year?

For the second piece of advice, I have found a potential deal, but I'm not sure how to appraise the deal itself. Since there are really no multi family residences in Northern Virginia, I had a hard time finding comps. 

Here is a link to the deal here. I found the annual property taxes run about $1900/yr. 
The deal is a 3BD 2BA duplex. I assumed this to mean the entire property is being sold and each side has 3BD 2BA. I factored in rent for a 3BD apartment would be about $2300/mo  in the given location. I used the calculator on this website and found a monthly cash flow for vacancy/cap ex./management/repairs/etc. to be about -$700/mo. 

Would someone be able to tell me if an asking price of $400k is acceptable? Too high? Too low? Also, I'm interested in learning more, so any more recommendations for books on house hacking would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!