Questions about Analyzing SFH Deals

[Haroon Qamar]

Hey BP,

I'm currently a sophomore in college and I've been saving up money to buy a property within a year or two. Right now I do as much as I can to learn about REI ( Buy and hold Niche ). One thing I especially like to do right now is practice analyzing deals on my own.

To the point. I plan on purchasing a SFH with an FHA loan and rent out the others rooms for my first property. Whenever I analyze just about any deal I never seem to get any cashflow when using an FHA loan. However, if I use a conventional and put 20% down I can attain decent cashflow on the better deals.

Should I just save up for a 20% down payment when investing , and base all of my calculations off of that? Should I expect to be finding cashflow on properties when I finance FHA meaning I'm just looking at garbage deals? Also, when i calculate should I be using the rent from the other rooms I'll be renting or should I be basing it off market rents of the house since I dont plan on living there forever?. (Renting by the room almost always has prettier numbers thanthe market rents).