Rental property I will be living in

[Drew Potts]

Does the brrr method work for a house i plan to live in with 2 other tenants? Ill only be living there for a year or two so should i refinance before i move out?

[Andrew Postell]

@Drew Potts ok, so I'll position this in a little different way. I would recommend to NOT BRRRR a primary home. What I mean by this is that the BRRRR method is designed to limit your out of pocket costs. For example, buying an investment property in the traditional way means you put 20% or 25% down type of thing. The BRRRR method helps prevent that much coming out of your pocket. But with your primary home - you are putting down 5%, 3.5%, 3%....and in some cases 0% (first time homebuyer programs, etc). So you ALREADY have the lowest downpayment available - way lower than any investment property. AND you get a SIGNIFICANTLY lower rate on your loan when you use it to purchase. AND you have renovation loans already at your disposal if you really wanted to go that route.

Also, when we target investment properties they may not be in a neighborhood that we will live in.  Maybe they are far away from work or the neighborhood doesn't have what we need with school zones OR WHATEVER.  So you might want to live in an area for a variety of reasons....or maybe NOT live in an area for a variety of reasons. But with rental properties, we aren't thinking of us, we are thinking of others...who might ALREADY be living in that neighborhood in some junky apartment and renting a home would be a HUGE upgrade for them.  I'm kind of giving extreme examples here but this is sort of how it works.  

And all of those reasons are why I would recommend focusing on buying a home with traditional financing and pick the right house for you. I hope all of this makes sense.