Buena Vista Heights, Nashville TN

[Chung-Hsuan Yu]

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post on Biggerpockets, even though I have been reading the books published by BP and listening to the podcast! I am definitely excited to have the opportunity to participate in such an amazing community! 

I currently own and operate a loft in Orlando, I previously purchased as primary residence, didn't plan on moving to Nashville. It's been about a year since I moved to Nashville, and definitely would like to become more serious about real estate investing while continue to work at my fulltime job. 

Recently I found a 1985 multifamily (duplex, 2Bd/1Ba each unit, total 1450 sqf) property in Buena Vista that I would like to do house hacking on. One of the unit definitely needs work done, while the other unit was renovated in 2003. The renovated unit is currently being rented out for $750 month to month, while the current owner reside in the non-renovated unit. As a lot of the investors in Nashville area probably know, there are many new constructions being built around the area. The asking price is $175k.

Being a newbie, I was wondering if you think it's even a good idea to proceed as I planned (house hacking). Also, I feel like I'm betting on someone to purchase the property off of my hand for tear down and rebuild in the future, so is it even worth it to spend money renovating? I would truly appreciate some feedback or advice from anyone!!

Hope everyone is having a great day!

[Sean Davidson]

Welcome to BP! We do some development in that area, so I'll try to help if I can. First, what is your lot potential? Can you build two detached homes with current zoning? If so, a developer is only going to give you pad value and could care less about the structure. A good rough way to determine pad values is to take the sales price for a new home and divide by 5. If new houses sell for 400k, I'll want to pay around 80k for each buildable pad. That being said, that area has already seen most of its appreciation. The initial jump from near worthless to 200k is where people make all of their money overnight. The climb up from here in that neighborhood is likely to be a bit slower now. If you are aiming for buy and hold, that's one of the few neighborhoods in town where you can get over 1%. A nicer neighborhood will be a much thinner deal with more capital needed. My personal preference and what we did in Hadley Washington is to renovate it cheaply and readdress in a few years as the city grows. Let me know if there is anything else I can help with.