House Hack turned LTR w/ Unlocked Equity via Cash Out Refi

[Brooke Cottrell]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $287,000
Cash invested: $25,000

I purchased this 3/2 SFH as a primary residence right before the neighborhood really took off. I also house hacked this property for ~4 years letting my friends live in the two spare bedrooms and netting down what I paid towards the mortgage and allowing me to spend ~$25K in improvements over the course of several years.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We flipped it over to a long term rental in October of 2017 with a monthly cash flow of $800 PER MONTH. Crazy.
Because this property had appreciated considerably over the course of the past 9 years; we decided to do a cash refi in May of 2019 to free up the equity we had in the home. This took our cash flow down to $300 / month but enabled us to have immediate access to cash on other opportunities.

How did you finance this deal?

Traditional financing when originally purchasing in 2010.
Cash out refinance completed in 2019.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Lessons Learned: It took me a while to REALLY start treating my properties like a business. Since I was often dealing with friends at that time; I felt like I had to give them a killer deal.....when they were probably just hoping for something that was a little less obnoxious than what the apartment complexes in the area were charging.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Lizette & Darren Conover were the agents who helped me with this purchase. I was very green at the time and really went above and beyond to make sure the transaction went smoothly - always with my best interests in mind.