All Forum Posts by: Douglas Krofcheck

Yes, if you get a FHA loan you have to move out of your current house and move into the duplex. You have 60 days to do so. You can still keep your house, you don't even need to rent it out, you just need to make sure the duplex becomes your primary residence (where you stay for the majority of the year) and you need to stay in the duplex for at least a year. As @Jesse Holshouser mentioned, the FHA loan could let you in with as little as 3.5% down.

If you're buying a place that has existing tenants, some lenders will consider 75% of the rental income towards your dept-to-income ratio.  That could help.

Are you on the income-based repayment plan with your student loans?

No, you don't need to already live in the city. What you need to do is have the intention to stay in the house you buy for the majority of a year (you can't buy it as an out-of-state investment property) and you must move in within 60 days. The house has to be your primary residence. I looked up the policy (which doesn't want to copy+paste well). See page 140. You can leave before a year if you meet their requirements for moving (job transfer, new baby, etc...). I think they penalize you by not letting you take out another FHA loan. I don't know if they charge you fees or anything.

Someone else can find the multi-family handbook.

I keep hearing people say the minimum time is one year, though I've never looked that up with FHA.

Hello, I'm in a similar situation as you, roughly 10K to start with. I'm planning on house hacking.  That's buying a 3-4 multi-unit building and letting the tenants pay the bills while I live free in the last unit saving up more for the next property.  I also opened a line of credit with a local bank to handle anything unexpected.  I've recommend doing the same, especially if that 10K is all your savings and you don't have an additional emergency fund.

With flips you'll going to have a hard time getting a traditional loan to buy the place and having additional money to fix it.  But if you can borrow money from people, then you could advance yourself faster doing flips.  

I'd agree with @Max Householder.  I've been looking around Nashua and Manchester and only a couple plexs looked like their photos.  Most were far worse. 

The bank can accept other offers during the process, correct?  When multiple offers are put in, do banks tend to just accept the highest one or do they give the others the option to put in a higher offer?

Ok, probably not worth the maintenance and definitely not cost effective if each unit needed to have it's own chamber.  The complex I'm looking at right now doesn't have any kids but I could see that changing in the future.  It would have been installed in the basement.  The units are on the small side and thought it could help save them space.

I've been looking to start investing by house hacking a 4 unit multi-family and I've always wanted to have a filterless central vacuum system (wikipedia).  Do you guys think it would turn into a maintenance nightmare to connect the system to all of the units?  I was thinking of putting in the lease that they'd need to pay for repairs to their hose if they get something stuck or if we know they damaged the vacuum (perhaps from sucking up used cat litter).  Not worth it?