Looking for 3/4 plex in Ogden UT

[Patrick Ketchum]

My wife and I are looking to get into our first "house hack". We're looking for a 3 or 4 plex in Ogden Utah. We're looking for something that would cash flow at least $100 a door after taking out 6% for vacancies, 5% for maintenance, 10% for capex, and 10% for management per month from the gross monthly rents. We're hoping to live in one of the units for a while at least, so one of the units would have to be available or close to being available. 

Price range 200k - 250k

Seller financing would be great.

If anyone has a lead on something like this, I'd love to hear about it. 

[Jake Isaac]

@Patrick Ketchum

Unfortunately I don't have any leads for you Patrick. If you don't mind, I'd like to share my own experience with a fourplex in relation to the numbers you're using to calculate your cash flow. I've owned for six months now, and originally did my calculations similar to yours, 35% of rents for my expenses besides the mortgage. In the short six months I've owned the fourplex so far the 50% rule you hear so much about on BP has proven to be true. My expenses have well exceeded 35% and I'm not even house hacking it, so I have an extra rent compared to owner occupancy. Luckily the investment is still working for us, but if we were living there we would have already spent a lot of money out of pocket to help keep up with the expenses. 

In your case, 250,000 purchase price with 10,000 down (3.5% FHA) gives you a payment in the range of 1,300 to 1,400/month if you include mortgage insurance. Typical 2 bdrm rent in Ogden is $700 maybe giving you gross yearly rents of 33,600 - 8400 for the unit you live in. If expenses are 50% of gross rents (33,600x.5) then you are looking at $16,800. Your mortgage will cost around 16,200 per year. Your expenses are greater than your income if you are living in one of the units. The purchase price needs to be much lower for these numbers to work. You make money when you buy at a low price.

Also, I hope you will manage the property on your own as long as you live there. Managing has taught us invaluable lessons about how to protect the capital value of our apartment and deal with difficult tenants, and the relationships (team building) we have accomplished by starting from scratch and having to find our own handymen, plumbers, etc. are benefiting us greatly. 

So I hope those things might give you some insight as you search for a property. Good luck!