Travel trailer or new property?

[Jovan Caballero]

Hey BP,

My wife and I are currently house hacking a triplex and fixing up each unit at a time as we live in fix. We are doing BRRRR and are thinking about our next move since we are almost done with this triplex.

We want to either purchase a travel trailer that we can live in full time as we continue to buy property to brrrr and park the trailer on the property as we fix them up. OR we want to just deal with living in our rehabs and never being unpacked fully and purchase another house hack to BRRRR.

The cash flow from the current house hack could cover any new Trailer payment  but I am torn between taking on another payment and losing that cash flow. This would keep me in my W2 job longer until I can pass my W2 income with our rental cash flow. 

Our goal is to be able to move to our properties and live on the lots as we rehab to BRRRR. We would like to do this full time eventually so the trailer would be nice so we can live comfortably unpacked and not in our rehab mess all the time.

Has anyone done something like this before? Really would like to hear how you did it and how it went for you. 

[David Lee Hall, III]

Don’t have experience on the live in flip side of things, but based on what you have said I would let this 1st property pay for the second property and then let that property buy your RV/trailer. Having 5 or 6 units (if you can get another small multi family) would be a lot more generous for saving for OpEx maintenance, paying yourself or property management, the next house hack, etc. The mobile living unit would be more of a luxury right now (plus if you are doing the renovation work yourself, you aren’t speeding the process, you can only work on one unit at a time). I would look at what a payment for a trailer/RV is monthly, if it is say $500, then try to arrange cash flow so 5 units could pay $100 each month after expenses and savings towards it. 

Just my 2 cents, keep rocking it!