Here is my Part two, from my previous post, on my tips for buying first house hack. Last week I focused on location, location, location. Although I’ll touch a little more location, as it pertains to the particular house, but my focus this week is to share tips on how it’s almost just as important to assess the rear of the property just as it is with the front and the neighborhood.
In Baltimore city, and many other major cities, we are known to have rowhomes, which means it’s important to determine which home would work best for your overall strategy. I mentioned in my last post that having a parking pad was crucial for me but what I didn’t mentioned is that I have plans to add a charging station at some point to be an added amenities for my future tenants and potentially have a vehicle stationary as an option. The home I purchased is not a corner lot home, in which I personally didn’t want, and it’s not in the middle of the row-homes. I happen to be the 3rd home in which has turned out to be perfect and I’ll share why. We have very small alleyways in Baltimore and we just encountered snow this past few days so I didn't have much to snow to shovel away. Had I been in the middle of the row-homes, it would have been a nightmare trying to shovel the entire alleyway. Mind you the city will not come out to do this and a lot of the other homes have fences so they don’t care to shovel behind the fence line. Another tip I wanted to offer is, if you’re considering buying a row-home, consider how the property would perform ALL YEAR round not just during the season you are purchasing in. In my case, I like the flexibility of washing my car in the summer, having a secured spot for either me or my future tenants during the snow months knowing you can warm your car up right in eyesight. Not walking far when it rains in the spring and etc..
Another tip is to also remember the factors in which you can control. I know I can’t control the width of the alleyway. I know I have no control over my neighbors putting up on taking down fences. The only control I have is over my property lines even though we share walls. I say this because my neighbor, in whom I found out is an investor, is flipping the house door so I straight up asked him what he planned to do with his back pad because essentially it will affect my plans. He did put the fence up to the tip of his property line in the back, which caused a minor inconvenience for me as I used to be able to just pull in the driveway but now I have to back in down the driveway to maneuver my car. The interesting thing is we have to account for our trashcans and recycling bins because the trash trucks do backup down the alleyways. So the future owner will have to leave their newly installed fence open for when trash days come and not expect to put them on my parking pad just because it’s open as it would hinder me from parking. I don’t say this to rant, as I’m a flexible guy, but to share perspective.
My last statement in tying this up is to talk to your neighbors or future neighbors before you pull the trigger on buying your 1st house hack. We don’t want to be that person that comes into the neighborhood that changes people’s quality of life for the worst. We are investors when means we are investing in communities and the people. I’ll have one final post next week on this topic.
