All Forum Posts by: Ken Swearengen

This is a house hacking duplex deal in southern PA. It's got a big yard and good schools for my kids, but I want to make sure it makes good business sense. In order to make the numbers work from me I would have to get $5k off the asking price of $267900 and raise rents to market which would be $100 per month per unit (that's what this report is based off of). My big question: are those things doable in today's rental and real estate market? The community is small town (suburb of York PA/Baltimore MD) so I'm not sure how accurate the Rentometer numbers are.

View report

*This link comes directly from our calculators, based on information input by the member who posted.

@Ethan Johnson Jon and RJ have provided the information you need! 

@Ethan Johnson What's the asking price?

@Shardina R. You may want to also pass it by your lender; they may have restrictions on lending to an LLC vs lending to you in your name.

I found a property with a 4 bedroom house and a 1 bedroom cottage. I'd like to live in the house and rent out the cottage; however currently the cottage is considered a "shed" by Baltimore county which I can only assume is for zoning purposes. It's in an RC 6 zone, so I'm concerned that I can't legally rent it out due to zoning restrictions but I'm having a hard time locating the information I need to determine that. Do I contact the Zoning department first to see if I can convert the shed into an accessory dwelling unit, or do I contact Rental Registration department first to see if I can rent out a livable "shed"?

@Lucia Rushton For some reason the cottage is listed as a "shed" with the county (per the Zillow description), the tax assessment just has the entire property (home and cottage) listed as a single residential unit at the moment. So it would take some work with the county to see what permits and work I'd need to make it into a rentable unit. 

@Jaysen Medhurst Ah, for some reason I thought multifamily properties provided "better" tax benefits than traditional SFH properties as far as rentals go.

I've come across a property that has a detached 4 bedroom home and a detached 2 bedroom cottage. My question -- if I rented out both buildings, would that be considered a multifamily for tax purposes? Or do both units have to reside in the same building?

@Harjeet Bhatti Thank you for the answer!

I'm looking at house hacking a property that has two residential units and 1 commercial unit (a small tea shop). I wanted to reach out here (to help others) before I reach out to my lender and ask: would I be able to get an FHA or low down payment conventional loan to house hack if one of the units is a non-residential unit?