Am I Being a Diva? (deal sourcing with agent & loan officer)

[Keith Mikkelson]

First time buyer here - looking to figure out if my expectations are realistic. I'm looking to house hack a single-family or duplex, occupy for 1 year per FHA loan rule, and ideally exit after year 1 with a cash-flowing property.

In my mind, before I consider anything else, I want to know what the total monthly payment would be all-in, and the expected rents to be received from the unit(s). My loan officer tells me payment calcs should be left to him due to rate fluctuations and nuances in taxes across different locations.

Is it too much to ask my loan officer and real estate agent to provide an estimated payment and rent amounts up front? Since cashflow is the ONLY must-have on my list, it doesn't make any sense to me that we'd run around town looking at properties without having an understanding on these two fundamental numbers, but it seems my agent wants to do exactly that. Is this something I can expect my agent and loan officer to do for me? Or am I way off base here?

[Matt Devincenzo]

You're way off, this is something you need to be doing for yourself. Now the lender should be doing the calc' on payment etc since it does vary and depend on specific scenarios etc. Be they should give you an idea of where you're at based on generally what you have for a DP, income and price point you're looking to buy...maybe one scenario for SFR and another for duplex. For instance $40K down on an $800K purchase rate would be XX% payment ~$X,XXX/mo.

Your agent may provide some help with rents, but ultimately this really comes down to your intentions re: upgrades or improvements to rent at a certain rate. So you take those pieces of data and properties you're interested in, and calculate if something works for you. If it does then you make an offer, and your final numbers from the loan officer should be fairly close to your calculation.