House hacking a 203k SFH

[Megan Hodges]

Hey guys, just looking for advice here.

I found myself in a unique situation- I had a general direction in which I wanted to do my first investment. I wanted to qualify for the 203k, purchase a foreclosed duplex, renovate it, live in one unit and rent out the other. Refi, use the equity to continue on to my next property, etc. I THOUGHT my biggest problem with qualifying for the 203k would be credit and down payment. To my surprise I was able to get both of those taken care of much quicker than I had expected.

So when speaking with a mortgage broker a few months ago, I mentioned that my husband had just started freelancing this year (2019) and being that I am a stay at home mom, his work history and income info is what we would be using for the application. As most of you know you have to have a solid 2 year history in the same line of work and unfortunately that spoiled it.

At this point, I have spoken to another mortgage broker and he said I do have one option- I can have someone who DOES have that solid work history and meets all of the credit and income requirements, co-sign. The good news is my dad is also looking to invest in real estate and meets the criteria so with my down payment I believe he'd be willing to do it. The bad news is, this only works on a single family home. Obviously that messes around a few things for my genius plan and I'm curious if anyone has any advice on how to house hack a SFH to possibly still make it work like a duplex. Or maybe, flipping the sfh and going from there. I'm not too fond with the idea of flipping as my first investment because I don't hear a lot of good reviews on that but I'm all ears if any has some ideas! I would greatly appreciate it! Also, I'm in Houston in case that affects anything.