All Forum Posts by: Maria Osokina

@Jaysen Medhurst thanks for the advice! Your thoughts on CoC return and adjusting our financial expectations make sense, glad to hear we're not crazy. We have a friend/mentor that focuses on rentals and sets his deal floor at 1.5%, which I think was skewing our view a bit for house-hacking purposes.

As for what I mean by where we want to live, really 2 things. First, a building with decent sized units. We regularly have family come visit for extended periods, so anything of the 800 sq ft 2-bedroom variety would be miserable for us. Second is a neighborhood where we won't feel like outsiders: middle class, well kept, maybe a park or restaurant nearby. Doesn't need to be grade-A yuppie heaven by any means, but also think we'd feel awkward in a factory worker neighborhood. Basically I just don't want to be breaking down the door to move out the day the FHA occupancy requirement expires, if we go that route.

We're considering this place, I'd love to hear your thoughts. The rental and expense data the listing agent provided suggests potential, and the size and neighborhood makes sense for us.

Thanks!

Hello Bigger Pockets!

My wife and I are budding real estate investors, and for our first deal we're working on a house hack. We live in the Midwest where prices are reasonable, so a multifamily makes sense. We're early 30s with no kids (yet), and currently rent a 2 bedroom in a nice part of town.

We're trying to find a property that is both somewhere we would enjoy living (a comfortable size, attractive location, upscale enough to attract good tenants, etc.), and makes sense financially. These goals often seem contradictory - we either find deals that are attractive as investment properties but not to us personally, or are places we'd like to live but a pure investor wouldn't look twice at.

As we attempt to balance these goals, I'm curious what you consider the minimum necessary criteria for a house hack property to be a passable financial investment. I've identified three:

1) That the free cash flow be positive (if small) even with us occupying 1 unit

2) That the purchase price (+ rehab costs if any) be reasonable enough we could sell a few years down the road without taking a loss

3) That the free cash flow from all units (if we were to move out at some point) be worth the trouble of ownership, which we've set at $200 per month per door.

What are we forgetting? At this point we've more or less accepted that we won't find a place we really like that also meets the 2% rule and other typical pure-investment property criteria, but given it will save us the $20K+ we currently spend on rent each year we're OK with that, as long as we don't end up losing our shirt. Thoughts?

Thanks for your advice!

Aaron & Maria