All Forum Posts by: Darius Argentinis

We've got a great property with a ADU and it's the perfect setup to try doing short term vacation rental. However, the city has coding restrictions on where you can and can not have STVR. We are out of their STVR zone and unable to do under 30 days. Or can we? Wondering if anyone knows of any good workarounds to coding restriction problems like this! Thanks

Just following up! The neighborhood is not zoned for multifamily and rezoning isn't going to happen, so The City ultimately made this decision easy for me.

@Dave Faris Thanks for the local fun fact. That kind of lines up with my observation that the property may have been a duplex in the past and explains why it was converted back.

Hi all!

I'm in the process of acquiring a SFH. My plan is to house-hack while I'm living in the area (probably for the next 4 years) and then hold it as a rental property, or sell if that makes sense at that time. I like this deal because I feel like it has a lot of potential but I'm having a hard time settling on exactly what I want to do with it.

The upstairs is finished and has a kitchen, 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. I'm pretty comfortable on what I'd like to do with renovations there. The basement will constitute the majority of the work I need to do on this property. It's unfinished with an abandoned bathroom that will require a full rebuild. The basement happens to have its own private entrance and its own driveway, which makes me think that it may have been a duplex at one point in time, so it's looking like I could do one of two things: 

Option 1 - Keep it as a SFH and force appreciation by finishing the bathroom, adding bedrooms, and adding another living space or laundry room kind of thing. The advantage of this would be a simpler/cheaper renovation. I also think it would be easier to sell if I decided to do that when I move out in a few years.

Option 2 - Convert the property into an up/down duplex by making the basement into its own separate unit. This would make house-hacking more comfortable now and leave me with two units to rent in the future, but the renovation will be much more expensive because of the need to build a kitchen/kitchenette. I'll also need to be a lot more creative with designing the floor plan.

I know a lot of the specific details will depend on my local market (Des Moines, Iowa btw) but has anyone had to make this kind of decision before? How did things play out? If you converted your SFH to a duplex, were there any unexpected problems/surprises on the legal/regulatory side, like being unable to rezone the property or get a rental certificate?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone!

Background: I'll be starting medical school this next academic year. I know I won't be able to work while I'm in school and that my cost of living expenses will financed by existing savings and/or loans. My plan is to minimize my living expenses and get started in real estate at the same time by purchasing a SFH or small multi-family that I can househack. I'm trying to find a way to finance the deal as before I contact a realtor so I'll be ready offer on a great deal when I find one but, since I won't be working, I'm anticipating that I won't be able to qualify for a traditional loan on my own. I'd like to see if I'm not missing a better way forward before I dive too much deeper into my other options, like using a hard or private money lender or finding a partner.

Question(s):  Would I be able to qualify with a cosigner? Also, does anybody have any experience obtaining a mortgage as a single, unemployed, full time student? Will having one form of debt (new student loans or mortgage) damage my credit and prevent me from qualifying/applying for the other (mortgage or new student loans)?

@Brian Pulaski thanks for replying! I'm new to REI and I'm still working out what strategy/method I want to focus on. I was only using this property as a practice exercise and did not plan to actually purchase it. I definitely need more practice using the calculators and making accurate estimations.

I was also hoping to start developing my intuition for good versus bad deals on properties that need a rehab with this example. I felt that the refusal to show the interior very suspicious and I'm assuming that everyone would automatically reject this property based on that fact. 

If interior inspections weren't prohibited, do you think an experienced flipper/rehabber or wholesaler might have chosen to spend the time running the numbers on this listing?

View report

*This link comes directly from our calculators, based on information input by the member who posted.