All Forum Posts by: Lexi Bentson

We are a young couple living in SLC, Utah. We have no kids, we make just over $100,000 each year combined. We currently have no debt, just pay monthly rent. We have saved up $30,000 and would like to jump in feet first into investing. We would like to take advantage of an FHA on a multi family and be owner occupied. The only problem is for most the properties we have seen so far we're not confident they would be cash flowing if we were to move out two or three years after living there (house prices are high, we'll have to pay mortgage insurance, etc). We would love to and are willing to put in some sweat equity. We just aren't knowledgeable about how much value we could add or our potential to increase rent for a property.

 Our goal is to save as much of our own money (reduce personal rent) while being owner occupied, this makes triplexes and quads appeal more to us. However, a lot of these bigger properties are not in the nicer areas of the valley which is also concerning to us because we are not sure they will appreciate as rapidly or we could change rent as much with our own sweat equity.
We are looking for houses daily, trying to run numbers, and are curious how the housing market will fluctuate in the future. If you were in our shoes what do you think would be a good approach? What have we not thought of? Or what should we be looking for? Should we try to save up more money?

My husband and I are currently renting in the cottonwood heights area in SLC. We have been saving for a while to try and buy a house. We recently stumbled on FI and we want to house hack. Buying a multi family property or a house with potential to rent out the basement is our goal. I have only begun to call around to get pre qualified by lenders. Most of them say getting an FHA with a very small down payment for a multi family isn't possible. I was wondering if it is possible to get a 3.5% fha down payment for a multi family?
We are first time buyers, both with credit scores > 740, no dept other than mostly travel hacking credit card payments that we can easily pay off. We are both full time W2 employees.