San Francisco Bay Area House Hack

[Joe Black]

Investment Info:

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

Purchase price: $725,000
Cash invested: $95,000

I purchased a small multi-family home in Oakland to house-hack. This was a great opportunity to complete a RE transaction with low risk. I have pretty much eliminated my housing expenses as a result.

[Joe Black]

@Amit M. Sure thing. Its a 3 unit property that consists of main house (2/1), lower unit 1/1, and cottage (0/1). Yes we kept existing tenants in cottage, two units were vacant (thank goodness). Luckily for the main unit we just needed to open up a wall and refresh the kitchen with pain cabinets. We spent the bulk of the reno budget on updating the bottom unit where we stay.

We were also lucky to finish up reno and lease out the main unit at market price right before full covid lockdown.

We did run into some unforseen costs including replacing a roof (ouch) but we survived.

Also, we refinanced after 6 months which reduced our interest rate by 1.1%, never thought we'd do it so soon but it we couldn't pass it up!

All in all this was a great learning experience for our first investment.