Why not Truro, Nova Scotia ?

[Yuan He]

Hello there,

Hope everyone is doing fantastic !

I am looking to start my first house hacking by owning an multi-family property, hoping to get some advice and thoughts here. I just recently moved from New Jersey to Halifax, working remotely as a full-time data engineer for a company in NYC. The point is, I can live literally anywhere because I don't have to go to an office. Only thing is that I have a wife and kid with me, so areas with good school are ideal.

My search started at Halifax, and soon realized Halifax rental property is a bit expensive to pursue and the rent/purchase ratio kinda fall far behind 1%. Of course not to say this is the deal breaker, but rough math tells me that with ourselves living in, it probably won't cashflow well with big chunk of rent going to mortgage payment.

So I started to enlarge the span a bit and visited some properties in Truro since I heard it's the 'Hub'. I set goal to go for triplex or fourplex, and currently found two properties that might be a good deal with inherited tenants in it. From talking to the tenants themselves and some local people, the neighbourhood is alright. However, I talked to some lenders, and some of them are not even willing to lend in Truro and claim it's 'chaotic'. When I drove in Truro, everything looks just like a normal suburban area and no way I can tell how the economy and employment are here, and thus how rental properties will turn out here.

So since I have heard two sides of the stories now, would love more inputs from anybody. How's Truro in general ? Do they have good grade schools ? Do they have tons of vacancies here ? And why don't everyone go here given it's reasonable price and being close to HRM ?

Sincerely appreciate it.

Yuan He