New Investor Looking to House Hack While In School

[John Doss]

Hello BP members!

My name is John and my interest in real estate began towards the end of last year. I currently work as a GrubHub driver and listen to audiobooks and the BP podcasts all day while I am making deliveries. I've read several BP books like "The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No and Low Money Down" and "The Book on Rental Property Investing" by Brandon Turner. And I am currently reading "BRRRR" by David Greene. I decided its finally time to take action so I got the PRO membership to start analyzing investment properties and begin to connect with others in the area.

I recently got accepted into the DPT program at Winston-Salem State for graduate school, which begins in January 2022. I found myself caught between wanting to pursue my newfound interest in real estate and following through with my original plan of becoming a Physical Therapist. But why not pursue both? My long-term goal is financial independence and I see real estate the vehicle to get there, while PT can bankroll my investing. But I see no reason to wait on pursuing real estate for 3 years while I'm in school and rent like everyone else, when I could be building equity in a residence of my own. Hence, my goal for this year is to find a small multi-family home in Winston-Salem that I can house hack while attending the graduate program for the following 3 years. I reckon that I could possibly fill the remaining units with other classmates in my cohort. And if that's not possible, I would search for tenants using a more conventional approach.

I am currently working with around $20,000-$25,000 that I have been growing in the stock market from an initial investment of $5,000 in 2019. I was thinking about utilizing the 203k loan to finance repairs and purchase price for a tri or quad in the Winston area. I do have very good credit, however, my 2-year income history is spotty because I was a full-time student less than a year ago. However, my parents are willing to partner with me on the loan so I can get approved for financing. Another possibility would be to obtain seller-financing. A problem I seem to keep running into is that there seems to be a scarcity of multi-family homes on the market in Winston-Salem and the ones that I see pop up on real estate portals tend to disappear in a matter of days. I was reading some comments on other threads and I saw some BP members suggest looking for single-family homes with an unfinished basement, and renting that out or turning it into a BNB. I honestly haven't thought of that, but I am open to the idea. I have really been trying cross my t's and dot my i's these last few months by intensely researching various aspects of REI and trying think of all the possible ways I could go about this, but I believe I am falling into analysis paralysis.

I look forward to hearing feedback from you guys about the feasibility of this goal and some next steps I could take towards accomplishing this. Thanks!