All Forum Posts by: Josh Bowser

Hey Sally!

I am going to bypass your question on screening and give you some things to think about on a lease for house hacking - from someone who has learned the hard way :)

Please understand that this is not legal advice, but something I wish I had done when using a generic lease agreement provided by an agent initially. 

Being that you are an owner occupant, you have a little more say about what goes into your lease. I would strongly consider adding a 'house rules' section of the lease and run it by a good RE attorney/lawyer. Here is what I would consider to add under house rules:

1. Guest policy -> How often do you want your roommate to have guests over? Do you want to be notified a certain amount of time before someone comes over? Are you okay with overnight guests? Are you okay with overnight guests of the opposite gender? How many nights in a row are guests allowed to stay the night?

2. Cleaning -> Are the roommates responsible for cleaning the common areas? Are they responsible for cleaning up after themselves? 

3. Access to the property -> Is there anywhere in the house that will be off limits?

4. Quiet hours -> This one is pretty straight forward and you also want to make sure you are abiding by these as well.

5. Parking ->  How many cars / person do you want to allow? Where should the roommate park? 

6. Misc -> Smoking / pet policy

6. HOA (if applicable) -> Consider a provision that includes all HOA policies as part of the lease agreement as well.

This is coming from someone who has been house hacking and will continue to do so.. we will just be updating our lease agreement!!

Please feel to reach out with any questions!

Hey James!

If you are currently renting, have you considered house hacking in your local market? This is a great way to get started as it really buffers your risk when you take into account the savings from what you would otherwise be paying in rent! Depending on your savings and DTI, you may even be able to buy a multifamily in your area with less than 20% down of you go the owner occupant route.

Additionally, $400k can go along way in tertiary markets in the south east.

Feel free to reach out - I am happy to help!

Hey Andrew!

This is an interesting situation and I have a bunch of questions!!

How close is the prospective tenants lease end date to when your renovations will be complete? Could they ask for an extension? Could you offer a few thousand to have the landlord keep them in until the renovations are complete?

Are you able to rent a room from someone you know for a while or a random person in order to get the tenants in place? Are the potential tenants willing to sign a lease with you prior to seeing the remodel?

 I would reach out to a lender / mortgage broker and see how they would underwrite if there was a signed lease starting a few months in the future. From what I have seen, if you are open and honest lenders/mortgage brokers will work with you in a situation like this. 

With all that being said, I would not put yourself in a position that would make yourself vulnerable financially just to get tenants in place!! You're 25 and have two houses with a lot of equity, it's okay to chill out and build at the speed of cash on hand!!

Holy rip Trent! That's awesome - congratulations!

Hey Waneeshe,

If you're looking to invest out of state, Atlanta (and Georgia in general) has a lot to offer. Demographic trends are very strong, and there are some tertiary markets that are benefitting from that while still offering solid cash flow. We have a great team down here in Atlanta that works a lot with out of state investors. Feel free to reach out if the ATL peaks your interest!

Hey Mary!

First of all, I'm happy to hear you have a solid financial at 22! 

I would take into consideration the income you receive from house hacking a condo, and how that will impact your savings. For example, if house hacking a condo will allow you to save an additional 3k / month, you'll have made back that 50k less than a year and a half. In this case, it might be worth house hacking now the condo and waiting an extra 6 months to obtain a house AND condo. 

However, if you're only able to save an extra 1k / month house hacking the condo, it might be worth waiting a year to buy a home with some value add. 

Either way, you have two good options in front of you.

Hey Shayla - there are a lot deals that get passed around before they hit the market. Just reached out via DMs, would love to find out more of exactly what you are looking for!

Personally, I like to have my finances/accounts as consolidated as possible. This comes from experience trying to reconcile accounts for tax purposes.

With only managing a few properties, I'm not sure if I wouldn't stress out about it too much until you get an idea of how each property behaves. If they are management/expense intensive you'll probably want to have separate accounts.

My two cents: One checking account for each property that ALL income and expenses get paid into and out. This will make your P/L pretty straight forward to calculate for filing purposes. One savings account is fine, but I would just move that money from savings to the respective checking account when property related expenses come up.

The good news here is that this is a GOOD problem to have.

These are the things that I would consider if I was in your situation:

1. Evaluate the headache factor of owning out of state property -> Do you have a property manager / friend / family you can trust to check on your property(s) while for you. Same goes for contractors and handymen. Does it make you nervous worrying about the property(s) before you have even left? 

2. Evaluate from a pure financial perspective -> What are your projected returns over a 5 year period renting out your current home? How about 10, 20, 30 years? How do those compare on buying something in Atlanta? If you sold your home in Chicago, and bought a home in Atlanta would you be better or worse off from a cash flow perspective? If kept the house in Chicago and bought a home in Atlanta, would you be comfortable with your reserves? Same goes for holding onto the Chicago house and buying a condo.

3. Compare markets on a neighborhood basis -> Which one do you think better fits your goals over the long term? Is the neighborhood you're going to buy in Atlanta, better than the neighborhood in Chicago? Do you feel confident that you can keep them rented?

There is no shame going from owning a house to renting either. You got to do what is best for you! If you do decide you want to buy, spend a week down here in Atlanta and check out all the local areas and see which you like the most.

I lived in Naperville for about a year during my first job out of school, and while I dearly miss Portillos, I do not miss the Chicagoland winters :)

Are you house hacking now? If not, this could be a good opportunity to do so that would add some yield to your investment while you wait to exit. I don't know you're exact situation, but this extra income could allow you to tap that equity.

Could you do some of the work by yourself and save some money on labor? 

Could you househack AND do some of the work by yourself?