All Forum Posts by: Lucas Hammer

Hey everyone. I closed on my first deal back in July (house-hacking) with an FHA loan and have been improving the property while living in it. My goal this year is to buy another multi-unit (2-4 units) in my city, but most of them need work. I know that FHA has the 203k renovation loan, but since I'm living in an FHA loan property, is there another way to borrow for a property that needs work? Will conventional loans allow me to buy a property that needs rehab and just let me rehab it over time out of pocket? Or is there another kind of loan that would allow me to buy the property and finance some repairs while getting it rented?

If renos have to be done in cash, then I might not be able to get another property this year, but I'm trying to figure out how to keep moving up.

Oh, and to answer your question, I'm personally not comfortable with North Lawndale. Nothing against the neighborhood, but it does get pretty rough as soon as you go north of Ogden. 

So I house-hack by Cermak and California. I personally love the area. I'm a few minutes from the pink line. I'm two stops from Damen if I want to check out Pilsen and a quick uber ride from 26th if I feel like Mexican food. 

I'm a block from Pete's fresh market and Walmart which is a huge plus too. Oh, and to top it all off, it's actually still affordable over here.

I doubt it, but if so, it'd be because of OFAC and wouldn't have anything to do specifically with Illinois. I'd contact a lawyer for this. 

Nice! Can I ask if that's by 21st St and Fairfield? I'm on 21st place between Washtenaw and Rockwell. I just closed my first deal and I'm house hacking a 2-flat there. The area is changing fast and there's a ton if construction all around me. And I feel like I walk by that building every morning on the way to the L. 

Thanks @Joshua Kaufman. My documents said I have until the 15th to pay without penalty, but I wasn't sure if there was anything that affected the interest on the back-end.

Awesome, thanks @Wayne Brooks. That's what I kind of figured, but I know my car loan would accrue additional interest every single day after the 1st until it was paid. I thought mortgages were different, but wasn't sure.

So I'm in my first ever mortgage (house hack in Chicago) and my mortgage is being serviced by Chase. The due date is the 1st, but on their website, it says that there's only a late fee if I pay on the 16th or after. My question is whether or not the total interest will go up if I pay on the 7th instead of the 1st. I'd like to collect rent on the 1st and then pay the mortgage on the 7th to prevent the lag of pulling money out of my property account just to put it back in within a day or two, but I want to make sure that my interest won't go up in the 6 additional days if I pay it on the 7th.

Can someone let me know if that makes sense or if I'm misunderstanding how mortgage interest is calculated?

Rents are climbing which will help. I'm house hacking a 2-flat farther west near California and Cermak and once I move out, it'll cash flow. It needs a little bit of foundation work, but it was in perfect working condition and I could've moved in if I didn't mind the ugly floors and carpets the day we closed. As it stands, we're updating since we plan on living there for a little while (maybe a long while and just buy a second property in the area), but we easily could've rented it with very little (if any) work and cash flowed when we bought it.

Gotcha, that makes perfect sense to me. I'll be getting a CPA soon (hopefully), but have some planning I'm doing in the meantime. I've been able to navigate almost all of the tax code myself, but the travel was the hardest part for me to figure out. Thanks again!