All Forum Posts by: Kevin S.

@Kevin Krysty Jr. Have you tried searching for similar properties that have sold in your area on Zillow? You can typically find duplexes/triplexes by setting your search criteria to "recently sold" and "Apartments" on Zillow as that's where small multifamilies show up on that site. If you know of neighborhoods with similar duplexes you could also try looking the addresses up on your county tax assessor website to see what they last sold for. At the end of the day though, what you should pay and what people are paying are two different things, so while I'd try and get a feel for what duplexes have sold for in your area, I'd also calculate what the most you can pay and still make decent cashflow and use that number to guide any offers you make.

@Felicia Richardson I basically just found neighborhoods with duplexes that I felt matched my criteria (safe, in reasonable shape, strong rents in areas that were either growing or would remain stable), used Zillow/Google Maps to help get the addresses for all duplexes those neighborhoods, and then typed the addresses into the county assessors website (not sure if your county will have a site that allows you to search properties by address, but ours does). This gave me the owner's names and mailing addresses for all the properties I was interested in. I then just typed up a quick note saying I was interested in buying, and mailed the letters out. A bit time consuming (you could probably pay a virtual temp to do the legwork) but all told just cost me some time and $100 on stamps and envelopes. All that being said, I lucked out because of the 120 or so letters I sent I only got 2 replies, one from the company that sold me the duplex I now have and one saying basically to leave her alone. Good luck on your search.

@Felicia Richardson I just went through the FHA duplex purchase process (closed about a week ago) and if you work with a lender experienced in FHA's it's not that difficult, really doesn't take much longer than a traditional mortgage. You do have to sign extra paperwork at closing stating your intentions to live in the property, the property have to be in livable condition (i.e. things the appraiser notes as issues will have to be fixed before closing, woodrot being the biggest issue), and you are required to be living in the property within 60 days of purchase (not sure that is true for 203k FHA's). The one issue I ran into that you may not if you go the 203k rehab route is that sellers are often much less likely to choose a FHA offer over a traditional mortgage or all cash offer due to the extra requirements of livability that FHA's have. In the end I had to find an off-market deal in order to get a duplex in the area I wanted as every time I made an offer on an already listed property I was passed over due to using FHA.

@Heidi Kenefick yes, you can absolutely edit that information, all you need to do on Zillow is go to your property, click on the owner (or landlord) view tab, and click "I'm the Owner" and it should let you edit the listing.

@Heidi Kenefick In addition to what everyone else mentioned about the photos you might try beefing up the description, when I go to your listing all I see (besides the pics and standard info Zillow provides) is "No cats allowed". This is a great place to point out all the great things that make your property worth renting as well as put the contact info for your property manager, list rental criteria, etc.

@Frank Leone The biggest difference I've seen for financing on living in one side while renting out the other (often known as "house hacking") versus renting out both sides is the down payment %. If you go the FHA mortgage route you can get a down payment of as low as 3.5% BUT you're required to live in one side. If you buy it as purely an investment property you'll need a traditional mortgage which will come with a down payment requirement of as much as 20%. There may also be differences in the interest rates you get depending on if you're going FHA versus traditional.

Hey BP community, I just recently purchased a duplex in Tulsa Oklahoma and while it's in fair shape generally, there are several smaller projects around the place that need to be taken care of. Does anyone have a local handyman they would recommend? Thanks!

Thanks for giving us an update @Robert Perry hopefully the features we all enjoy about the site so much will be back on the app soon.

@Joshua Dorkin are these known errors/issues that are being fixed or just something we're gonna have to live with?

Bump