All Forum Posts by: Grant Schroeder

Hi @Kelii K., welcome to BP! I am a lender and investor here in the Portland market. As @Brad Hammond mentioned, looking into Tigard, Tualatin, and Newberg is a great place to start. I currently do the vast majority of my BRRRR & Buy & Hold investing in the Newberg market around George Fox University.

If you have further questions, I'd love to help if I can! Feel free to send me a DM with specific questions you have around lending on a BRRRR or Buy & Hold investment property. Good luck with your investing and great job leveraging the BP community to gain some experience from others right out of the gate.

@Tyler Yontz

Hi Tyler,

I have done two house hacks in Newberg, OR and am also a loan officer in the Portland Metro area.

1) There is nothing stopping you from renting out rooms on your property once you have purchased it. That is how I did my first house hack. I bought a townhouse and rented out the 3 bedrooms while I lived in the 4th room.

2&3) You do have to report the income on your tax return, but you are able to depreciate the house and write off certain expenses such as mortgage interest, property taxes, etc. So there are some benefits to reporting the income on your taxes. I am certainly not a CPA, and would recommend chatting with one shortly after you have purchased your property and started renting rooms. House hacking a single family home can get complicated with taxes, but a great resource to answer tax questions on House Hacking is @nataliekolodij. She is a CPA with her own practice, and specifically talked about this on BP Money Episode 112. She breaks it down really well for anyone to understand.

Let me know if I can be of help in any way! Keep asking great questions like these, you sound like you are on the right path.

@Todd Powell Of course Todd! Hope you have a great weekend, and thanks again for sharing your story!

@Todd Powell Thank you Todd! I house-hacked a townhouse with college roommates right after graduation, then house-hacked the duplex in 2019. Only one property have we had to put 20% down! I found 1 on the MLS, 1 through handwritten direct mail off-market, and the most recent one was an expired listing.

Thanks for asking about my parents. They are doing really well and in good health thankfully. Dad is up in Newberg every once in a while to help on properties, etc. It's nice to have them only an hour away!

@Todd Powell Thank you for all that information Todd! We currently have 4 units in our portfolio in the first two years up here in Newberg. Two student rentals and two traditional rentals. I am doing some research on HELOCs as we have created 35% equity in a recent rehab we did on a duplex and want to leverage 10-15% of that equity with a HELOC to tackle the next one. We can only save so much in a short time period from our salaried W2 jobs.

I have actually come to a realization about civil/structural engineering in the past 6 months like Jason & Erik probably did after graduating from OSU. It is a little more mundane than I anticipated and the room for growth is not there. I have always been a high driver and competitor, and watching coworkers work half as hard and make the same salary drives me a little nuts. I also enjoy helping people and conversing with clients, not simply sitting in a cubicle and crunching numbers all day like in the engineering world. I enjoy analysis of course, but also enjoy the human element! After two years in engineering, I am transitioning into becoming a mortgage loan officer here in Newberg with an incredible team of people that are Believers as well! God has been good to my wife and me, and I’m excited for this next phase in sales where I can be the driver of my income and work in the real estate/lending/finance community.

@Todd Powell This is an incredible story! Thank you for sharing, and Congratulations! Who did you use for your HELOC?

Hey BP Community! I have two inherited tenants on one side of the duplex I am currently house-hacking with my wife. It is a mom and her 28 year old son. The mom has been great to work with since we purchased last summer, but the son has been causing trouble lately. I do not allow smoking tenants in my rentals when people go through the application process, but since I inherited these tenants and he was upfront about smoking marijuana (not medical), I said he cannot smoke in the property, and must be at least 25 feet away from the outside of the duplex if he chooses to smoke marijuana. Since it rains here in Oregon constantly during the winter months, he has taken to smoking under the back porch in the evenings to avoid being caught, but I have found him there multiple times in the past month. I don’t want to evict them, especially with the mom being a quality long-term Tenant, but was wondering if anyone has come across a similar situation as this and what you would recommend doing?

Thank you for your advice!

Neal, I am looking to purchase a property that is in the foreclosure process currently. The current landlord is also going through the eviction process with the tenant in Unit A, while Unit B is vacant. Do you have any advice or reading material that you would recommend to dealing with the eviction process in the situation as well?

Thank you!

@Gavin Wisser - I will look into that, thank you!

@Gordon Forbes thank you for your thorough response on this! The electrical box is indeed in the garage and easily accessible. 

I will begin with calling the appraiser who performed the appraisal during the closing process, and then see about calling the county. The contractors used it as an office throughout construction of the complex, so the room is complete with a ceiling fan and one full wall of closet/cabinets.

Your note about the CC&Rs is a good one, I will need to dig into those further.

Your advice is much appreciated!

@Ralph Hughes - Will do Ralph!

The townhouse I recently purchased was the model unit for the entire complex and the contractors converted the garage to an office/den with a window and an exterior entrance. I currently am house-hacking and have two people living in this space since it is a larger room than the master bedroom. The only thing missing to qualify the room as a 4th bedroom is a heart source in the room. I am looking to get the house appraised for a HELOC in the next couple months and want to find the most cost effective way to get the townhouse appraised as a 4 bedroom instead of a 3 bedroom like the rest of the units in the complex. Should I begin simply by contacting the city for their recommendations? Would it be as simple as cutting a vent in the wall from the garage to the interior of the home to allow heat to flow into the room? Or would this require possiby having to run a duct from another area of the house? Thank you for your help BP community!