House hacking in Los Angeles with a family

[Paul Wolfson]

My family and I are looking to purchase a SFR in the LA area, preferable in Valencia or Thousand Oaks. We are looking for 3 or 4 bd houses in the 600-650k price range. We have enough for 20% down, but perhaps there are more creative approaches like using an FHA loan and using the remainder of the 20% for rehab.

Questions.

1. Is there a way to make a house hack work if you have children?

2. Is there a way to use an FHA loan, and remainder of 20% for rehab, but then somehow later refinance into 30-year fixed to lower the mortgage payments?

Thank you in advance. I'm new to BiggerPockets, and so far this has been an amazing resource thanks to this amazing community of knowledgeable people like yourselves.

[Will Barnard]

House hacking is typically done best in multi family properties where you buy a duplex or larger, live in one unit and rent the other units out.

For a single family home, your house hacking options are renting rooms out or adding an ADU rental unit. This can be accomplished by converting a garage to an ADU or building one from scratch.

I live in Santa Clarita so I know the area well and if you are looking for 1980's or newer, it will likely be on the smaller side, and likely need to be in less than good condition (which is what you want anyways. Thousand Oaks (commonly known as TO to us locals) is perhaps even more expensive so you may be better off in the SCV. Doing this with kids is challenging so on a single family, your best bet is the ADU option. The rules are changing for the positive on ADU units so now is a good time to take advantage of that for a potential house hack.