House hacking in condominium 5-plex?

[Manveer Atwal]

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking to begin house hacking. I know how it works with standard rentals, live in one unit and rent out the rest. I'm curious if the same rule applies to condominium units? For example, there is a 5-plex condominium building on sale near me. Am I able to live in one and house hack? I'm not sure because the condo unit owners would be paying the banks to pay off their mortgage, not me. Where as a standard duplex or quadplex would make renters pay me as their landlord. Any insight would be helpful.

Thanks.

[John Leake]

It would be an interesting method of investment you could be the bank in that scenario and get a return based on the interest you are having them pay you. If you owned all of the units you could also just rent them which is the more common method. I also think that for most conventional financing it has to be 4 units or less. Five or more units is considered commercial or they bank may look at each condo as its own unit. Likely you would need a commercial loan for your purchase of all of them at once.