All Forum Posts by: Jin Kim

Hi Johnny! I cannot answer the first two questions due to the fact I do not live in Chicago. However, for the 3rd questions, I personally would recommend getting an FHA loan compared to a conventional loan. For an FHA loan, you only need 3.5%. The less of your money in the deal, the better.

Also, since it will be a house hack, the people you are renting to will help pay your mortgage. When you do decide to move out of the house, I would refinance a year prior to moving out to get rid of the PMI and lower your payments. That way you can get better cash flow when you move out.

Let me know if you have any questions and if you need a recommendation for an agent in Chicago, let me know! Good luck and I wish you the best!

Hello Chris! Congratulations on your first house hack! I think you are on the right steps towards gaining more properties. What I recommend is doing a cost analysis and see how much your time is worth. If you believe hiring someone would be cheaper compared to when you do the job and include your time, I would say hire a handyman. I hirer my handyman to go out and figure out why a certain plug is not working or why something is leaking. But to change an air filter, that is something I do because it is cheaper for me (including my time) to do it rather than hire a handyman.

I also agree with Luis and Matt with establishing a good relationship. The handyman I have does not charge me when I call him to go somewhere to figure out a problem. But at the same time, I have taken good care of him where I have paid him a little extra because he has taken care of me in the past. I treat him more like a friend when I talk to him rather than a worker of mine. 

But another thing to consider is since it is your first house hack, you will have to work in your business sometimes. Especially starting off. The end goal is to not work in your business but in the beginning you got to put in work. Hope this helps and good luck! Feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

Devin it all depends on what you are looking for. My advice is to do the live in hack. And it does not have to a multi-family building. I live in a three bedroom/two bathroom house. I used to rent out both rooms, but am only currently renting out one. Also, in my opinion, it is less maintenance than a multi-family. It is always best to start off small and learn the basics. If you want to push it a little further, you can look for a house that is undervalued. That way when you move in, you can fix it up, build quick equity, and get cash flow while renting out the other rooms. As far as whether to use your own money or get a loan, I am a advocate on using the minimum amount of money when buying a property. Less of your money in the deal. With an FHA Loan, you only need 3.5% down.

I do believe there will be a lot of evictions and foreclosures in the future. However, I do not know if there will be a price drop in the housing market. I believe it was said in a one of the BP podcast, the government has printed SO MUCH MONEY that the housing price may not drop due to inflation. The only thing I can see changing eventually is houses will not sell as fast as they are now. My personal opinion about why houses are selling so well where I live is because people want to move out of the city because nothing is open. They are moving to bigger suburbs city (like mine) because they want more space to work from home and a bigger place to relax (i.e. bigger backyard, pool, etc).

I don't see any problems with vacancy in the area I live in. I have a spare bedroom in my house and I was able to quickly find a person interested in the bedroom. I actually believe there are a lot of people buying homes right now as well as a lot of people looking to rent a house. Some of the renters may be someone who recently sold their house and are looking to rent until the housing market crashes again to capitalize on their money.

@Greg Dickerson I do see the property taxes definitely going up in the near future, especially in the highly populated areas. I also see sales tax everyone going up as well.

I personally don't think it'll get passed because a lot of government members own business and rental properties for side income and tax deferred benefits.

Do I believe redlining, discriminatory lending, etc. exists in the world? Absolutely. But no human being or company is perfect. While one may be biased, there are plenty of companies out there that are not. 

Also, it is not only the African American community. There are other places out there that will not sell to Asians, Muslims, etc.

But at the end of the day, we can make excuses or the people that want home ownership and generational wealth needs to put in the effort like we all are.

But a lot of people are only looking for free/hand outs from the government.

In my opinion, the best way to effectively address racial disparity to effort the minority of whatever neighborhood you're in about financial independence and investments (real estate, stocks, etc.). It is up to them as individuals if they want to listen to us or not.

We all work hard for our money. We need to teach the future generations that hard work still means something in the world.

Contingents are the way to go with a long due diligence process. I am currently in the process of buying a duplex as well with tenants in place. I have asked for an extended due diligence to ensure I have enough time to thoroughly look over the paperwork provided to show my numbers match with the numbers the seller originally provided.

I also have a rental property in North Las Vegas and luckily have not had trouble receiving rent. I am actually actively looking to buying a duplex right now thinking landlords would want to sell before hitting default on their payments. But every offer I've put in or reached out to, the sellers show no interest and stay firm on the price.