The fine art of analyzing a small multifamily property.

[Naeem Kapasi]

Hey guys! I am moving to the USA next year and hopefully moving to Houston, Texas. I have been interested in real estate investing since I was a teenager, but I have yet to buy my first property. I started studying real estate in January this year, and I have read a lot. I wanted to start out flipping houses but considering the current hot market and the fact that I live in Norway, I decided to pursue buy and hold investments (not eliminating the possibility of me doing flipping in the future). I am looking to house hack a small multifamily (duplex/triplex/fourplex), whatever I can find. I am about to start analyzing those kind of deals, but I am a little confused about what exactly to look for when analyzing a small multifamily property deal.

I know I can use the rent calculator here on BP, but that doesn’t take into consideration the comps in that particular area. Would you suggest that I run comps separately and then also use the rent calculator here on BP?

Also, let’s say I find a deal that may look interesting (by looking at the physical condition of the property), how do I figure out the costs such as insuranse, garbage/sewer, water etc? I mean, I need to find out about these costs prior to making an offer on the house don’t I? And I can imagine that it would take time to find out about those costs.. Wouldn’t I loose the deal, for being too slow to making an offer on it?

I want to make it a habit to analyze at least one deal every day.

What I am looking for is how an investor who regularly buys these kind of deals, analyzises them fram A-Z :)

I appreciate all valuable feedback. Thank you for reading this long post and for any feedback!

Ps. If you know of any forum or blog posts about this, then please let me know. I tried to search for it, but couldn’t find what I was looking for, maybe I didn’t look well enough!