Should I house hack or go with my own investment property?

[Aaron K.]

I need some advice on where to start. I feel like my wife and I are wasting our money and missing opportunities.

Go easy on me. First time poster and really first time investor.

I have a home in Detroit that I had bought under an FHA loan previously and now I have renters in it since it's been three years and I had to move to Chicago.

I recently became married. I’m not sure what to do or how to do the cost breakdowns to see what is more realistic.

My wife and I have $30,000 dollars in cash. We currently rent in Chicago and pay $1800 in rent.

The subject for discussion is whether we should buy a home in Chicago with another FHA loan and rent a room out to someone else. Basically house hacking.

We ran the numbers for us to own a decent 2 bedroom, our mortgage would be $2100 dollars almost. The value of the home isn’t going to really increase significantly. We can rent a room out for $800 dollars which would bring our mortgage down to $1300.

If we buy another rental and do a conventional loan in Metro Detroit, the mortgage with insurance and taxes will be around $950. Rent is $1500. We have a cash flowing property resulting in $550 extra dollars a month. No one has to live with us as well. The value of the home also increases significantly in the area we are looking at due to development.

If we chose to do an Airbnb then the money could be even more from my understanding. However, we would need to pay someone to help with this.

My wife isn’t a huge fan of the house hacking idea, but she would do it if I said we had to for a couple years.

My question is what should I do? I need to make a solid choice somewhere.