House Hacking in Florida

[Garrett Jennings]

Hello all- 

I'm from Wisconsin, and looking to start house hacking in Florida.  I have a few questions such as what are some great markets to do this in, do you rent out to long term or short term tenants, can this still be a good hedge to inflation, etc.  If anyone out there does this I'd love to talk to you!

[Josh Green]

Quote from @Garrett Jennings:

Hello all- 

I'm from Wisconsin, and looking to start house hacking in Florida.  I have a few questions such as what are some great markets to do this in, do you rent out to long term or short term tenants, can this still be a good hedge to inflation, etc.  If anyone out there does this I'd love to talk to you!

 Hey Garrett,

I would first narrow down your list to areas you want to live in - house-hacking can be done successfully in most places in FL but it's important to live somewhere you want to.  For me, that was the Tampa Area due to the balance of amenities, growth/projection, and affordability to rent ratio.  

Once you have your list (I used Youtube and read online blogs about different areas), open up some websites to see what property prices look like and what kind of rents to expect.  You can quickly determine which areas are going to have the numbers that you want to meet your criteria.  

Without jumping into details too much, I'd say that MOST MFRs in the Tampa Bay area are currently overpriced - the cap rates are lower than the interest rates which is a tell-tell sign of negative cash flow. I work with clients like yourself and I'm seeing good opportunities in the SFR+ADU space where the prices are less inflated, competition for these properties is lower so you can reasonably get under contract, and you have several exit strategies. As far as making it a profitable house-hack, depends on your comfort to profitability scale and goals. There is definitely high cash-flow potential through a House-Hack STR (doing it myself) but a lot of little tricks to it which is where a good realtor comes into play. Between zoning, insurance, setup, and identifying the numbers on a property, those are all things I can also help you with in this area as I specialize in house-hacking and STRs here so feel free to connect if you have any further questions!