Remote Worker Looking to House Hack Vacation Home From Anywhere

[George Miller]

I have been searching for an ideal house hack for about 7 months near my Milwaukee town and have been unlucky.

Because of the Coronavirus, I was recently put on remote work from my company. So that being the case, I had the thought of trying to move to house hack to any area in the US that has the best numbers, because well I can and it's the only time I'll be able to do this. 

Ideally, it would be awesome to pick up a 3 or 4 unit in an area that I could vacation to with my nieces in the future, something on the West Coast that would also pay for itself ( break even) with 1 unit empty. I know that's a stretch, but I can literally look anyhere so odds are somewhere has to have it.

I would be getting an FHA loan with 3.5% down, with the goal of leveraging that 3.5% as much as possible, all the up to the FHA max of 1.4MM for a 4 unit in certain markets. I called the FHA department and explained what I was doing to ensure that I would still qualify for owner-occupancy and they said as long as I have a W-2 I should be OK.

So here's my ask - what do you think of this idea? What are the best markets I should be looking in? So far, I've found the best deals (on paper at least) in San Antonio and Houston. It's not near a coast but it would still be a nice get-away from the Wisconsin Cold.