House Hacking Mixed Use Property

[Michael Williams]

I have been searching hard for the perfect home in Southern IL that I can house hack and rent rooms to travel nurses. My plan is to find one that has a finished basement with kitchen and bath which would allow privacy for the tenants upstairs. In my search I found a property that has a store front attached with a month to month tenant. According to the NOI that is in the listing description the rent collected covers the mortgage payment and hopefully when I view it tommorrow there will be a way to rent a bedroom or two for cashflow.

Has anyone house hacked with this type of property?  I think I need to speak with someone with commercial leasing experience too so I will know how hard it would be to rent the store out again should that tenant leave and understand expenses and risks of leasing a storefront.

[Sarita Scherpereel]

@Michael Williams here in Chicago, there is a lot of commercial storefront inventory available. The hard part about owning mixed use buildings is it has longer vacancies since there is so much inventory. Even if in in theory you can get the estimated rent if you don’t already have a tenant in place that can be difficult. You might have longer vacancy rates. Definitely ask your realtor or the listing agent to run reports for you with market time for those rentals. Again, this is my experience in Chicago. But it can never hurt to know this information. Best of luck!