Our first Property- A turn key Duplex

[Darren Wayne Shanks]

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment in Kansas City.

Purchase price: $190,000
Cash invested: $11,000

My husband, Darren, and I bought our first property in Dec 2017. I have to admit, I did not have a large hand in buying our first property. We had a six month engagement and Darren ended up buying this while I was being a busy bride-to-be! We got this before we started learning about REI, but we both knew this was what we wanted to do to better our future.

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

We knew we wanted a duplex to house hack. Beyond that we didn't have a specific investment strategy as long as we felt we were smart with our money.

Bonus- that is still our strategy 2 year later ¯\_( • ᴗ • )_/¯

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Darren worked with our Real Estate Agent through conventional ways to find and negotiate the deal.

How did you finance this deal?

We financed our deal with a VA loan. The lender requires you to have a turn key property so it was pretty simple once all the requirements were met.

How did you add value to the deal?

We did not need to rehab since we used a VA loan, but we had planned to live in one side and rent the other. We house hacked for a year until we left for our deployment and rented out the other side. WIN!

Lessons learned? Challenges?

A major lesson we learned was the length of your financing depends on the goal of your property. Neither a 15yr or a 30yr loan is bad. Want equity for a HELOC in the future? Get the 15yr loan! How about more cashflow? Go with a 30yr!
We chose a 15yr loan and later learned that investors go with longer loans for more cashflow. We thought we were wrong- until we learned about HELOCs! THEN we learned sometimes there is no wrong answer- just different ways to take advantage of the spot you're in.

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

We had an awesome real estate agent! Although she moved to a different state sadly.