First house hack in 2012

[Anthony Therrien-Bernard]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Calgary.

Purchase price: $255,000
Cash invested: $80,000

Acquired this property with 5% down payment in 2012 as a house hack. I rented the then illegal basement suite and rented a room to my girlfriends which allowed me to live there for free.

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

Through a real estate agent

How did you finance this deal?

5% down primary residence mortgage

How did you add value to the deal?

In the following year I started to pull out all carpets and replace them with laminate floor, repaint and change baseboards. In 2014 I completed renovated the basement suite from flooring to ceiling, kitchen, furnace, bathroom, windows etc. I legalized the basement suite a few years ago.

What was the outcome?

Rent: Main Floor $1225 Basement suite: $1000 Total: $2225

Net cash flow: $500

Lessons learned? Challenges?

This property was my first, I feel like everything went wrong there: 4 flooding, bad tenants, overbudget renos but somehow still came out ahead in an economic recession (given enough time, real estate is very forgiving so this property taught me a lot about what NOT to do. This property has been refinanced to a $340 000 80% LTV valuation in 2019 and is still generating good net cash flow.