My wife and I purchased and house hacked our first duplex in the Sacramento, Ca area with my VA loan in winter 2018, we've moved out summer 2020 and we currently cash flow $1800 a month from this property.

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

I purchased a single family home in 2016 in the Sacramento with my VA loan, before purchasing our first home I did not know much about real estate and investing, I began reading real estate and investment books and found biggerpockets, I'd listen to the podcasts, watch every video they'd put out on YouTube and I read every book that biggerpockets had put out at the time. Within the next 9-12 months I convinced my wife to sell our home and use the equity to purchase a duplex.

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

My wife found our first duplex on craigslist, it was a great deal, the seller was a house flipper and had been working on the hose for over 2 years and he was trying to sell another house at the time and he needed to unload a property soon. He had just posted the house the day before and we saw him to discuss purchase within a day. We negotiated $15,000 of the his asking price buy painting the entire house ourselves. We closed in October 2018.

How did you finance this deal?

I used the equity from selling my house and I used my VA loan again.

How did you add value to the deal?

We added about $15,000-$20,000 of value to property. We painted the entire property for $7500, installed stainless steel appliances in the smaller unit from our previous home, landscaped, we installed 3 windows into the smaller unit and installed a fence to separate the back house from the front house.

What was the outcome?

Updating the house allowed us to demand a higher rent in the area and get a better quality of tenant.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Always have reserves, it took us 3 months to find our first tenant. We had to pay the entire mortgage ourselves for 3-4 months. And when we did get a tenant within the first 2 months of them being there we had to repair the kitchen floors.

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

Yes Ive been working with great real estate professionals in the Sacramento area. My agent and lender were the work horses, they're also real estate investors so they knew how to help me.