First Time House Hacking with a Single Family Home

[Tom Krumpolc]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Pittsburgh.

Purchase price: $185,000
Cash invested: $40,000

3 bedroom one bathroom listed home that I purchased with a traditional loan in 2019. I was moving to Pittsburgh and knew I no longer wanted to pay rent. I was working in chicago at the time and would use Zillow and Realtor to scope out potential properties. I was aiming for a single family home or multi family that would need some rehab work but also something I could move into almost immediately.

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

Making myself commit to real estate investing. I am young and the property was under $200k in a desirable area of Pittsburgh. Worst case I figured I would take a loss and sell.

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

Found on Realtor.com and with my agent. The listing price was $229,000. It was a kind of town home connected to 2 other like in kind units. I noticed one of the other units had just sold for $202,000 and was in slightly nicer condition (from the online photos) than mine. I sent in an offer for $175,000 and we ended up negotiating a few times before landing at the final sales price.

How did you finance this deal?

Traditional 20% down loan

How did you add value to the deal?

I rehabbed the upstairs bedroom and am currently in the process of updating the kitchen and thinking of a creative way to add a second half bath on the first floor. The sink and shower do not drain and I would need to dig up the foundation to fixed the collapsed pipe but I want the additional equity from the half bathroom. Tbd on how I will be doing this.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Getting started and continuing to spend a little bit of time each day to do any rehab work yourself. It is very easy to become complacent once you are moved in and have one tenant to stop working as much on the property.