All Forum Posts by: Caleb Graham

 I appreciate the response. Adding PM cost into the calculation to give some buffer is probably smart. Will definitely make finding a deal more difficult but I get why you would do it that way

So I’m planning to move 1,000 miles away from my hometown in approximately two years. This move is a dream for both my fiancée and me, so it’s not something we'd reconsider. I’ve been actively making offers on duplexes for the past several months because I want to get started in real estate now. However, I'm starting to worry about managing these properties once I relocate.

While cash flow is likely to break even or be slightly positive, paying 8-10% for a property manager would significantly eat into my margins. Right now, I’m living rent-free with family, and I could continue to do so for the next two years before moving.

Here’s my dilemma: would it make more sense for me to continue to save money and start my real estate investing journey in my new state? Or am I overthinking the difficulty of managing these properties, is a property manager necessary? I’m really conflicted and would love any advice or fresh perspectives!

I've been looking at and making offers on duplexes and some single-family homes for about 6 months now. This will be my first property and I'm looking to do a house hack or find a single-family that needs some work in a good area of my city. I've made about 10 offers and almost every time, have been beaten by an all-cash offer or someone forgoing an inspection and closing faster than I'm willing to. 

I know 10 offers in 6 months isn't a crazy amount, but since this is my first property I'm being quite cautious. I've also pretty much exclusively found these properties through the MLS.

For those of you who have done 1 or multiple deals, how did you find your first one? Is this just par for the course? Do I need to lower my standards or try to find alternative ways to source deals? 

 @Ben Rhodin Thank you for helping to put this into perspective. Everything you said makes sense. We're moving to Grand Junction and the duplex we're looking into already has a solid tenant so we would probably stick with them. We will travel some months out of the year however, and in that case I probably would explore STR's.

 I suppose I'm more worried about when we outgrow the multi fam and decide to move. If it's cash-flow negative is it going to be a burden on our finances? Doesn't seem worth it to buy and sell after a few years but I also don't know if it would be worth it to hang on to..

My fiancé and I are moving from a pretty LCOL city in the midwest to a (relatively) HCOL city in Colorado. I've wanted to do a house hack for my first jump into real estate for quite some time now. The multi-family market in the city I'm moving to has been very slim for the past 6-12 months. Finally, an interesting property has popped up but I don't know if it would make sense in the long term.

Some numbers:

(I know I said HCOL and this may not appear to be that, but coming from the midwest, this was a significant jump)

The avg fixer-upper single-family home is going to run us ~325k and with around $40,000 down and a 6.9% interest rate we're looking at something like $2,400 a month PITI

Now the duplex I mentioned would go for about 100k more and with the same down payment and interest rate we'd pay something like $3,200 a month. This is in a good area downtown and I was surprised to see that rents are only about $1,300 a month. 

So from a pure monthly payment standpoint: (duplex) 3,200 - 1,300 = 1,900 > 2,400 (single family)

As you can probably see, this property isn't cash-flowing, let alone breaking even. At this interest rate and with current rents it won't cash-flow for many years. That wouldn't be a problem if we were planning on staying for the next 10 years but eventually, my fiancé and I would like to buy our own private house.

One upside is that appreciation is quite strong in the market I'm looking at, however, I don't know if I would want to rely on that. My hope with house hacking was always that I would be able to buy a multi-family property, live in it for a few years, and then move to my own home while hanging on to and renting the multi-family. Would it be stupid to move out of a house hack that's cash-flow negative? Should I pursue other markets or strategies?

Would greatly appreciate any advice as I'm not really sure what to do

Thanks for the responses! Love the idea of killing two birds with one stone. I will see about reaching out to owner.

Looking for my first-ever deal and I found a potential fixer-upper. The neighborhood is decent, nothing to write home about but pretty well maintained for the most part. The problem is, the house directly to the right of the one I'm looking at has trash and junk thrown about all over the yard. Looks pretty trashy and that worries me about finding potential tenants as well as future property values. The weird thing is that this is the nicest house in the whole neighborhood and would go for well over 400k. Anyway, I'm wondering if this should be an immediate no go or if it's still a deal to consider further?

5.5% on an HYSA is really good, I would stick with that. I'm in the same boat as you, saving as much as I can to fund my first house hack. We will get there!