All Forum Posts by: Matt Solis

Hi Vanessa, I would recommend renting by the room if you only have one rental. $600 per room is my best guess for that area, depending on the quality of the house of course, which is $2400 in gross rents. Compare that with getting only about $1800 for the whole house, even if you are paying for the utilities in the RBTR scenario. An extra $7200 per year in income is easily worth the few extra hours of work for finding multiple tenants. Be diligent in your screening process.

As for rules and regulations, call the city and ask. I'm pretty sure that mesquite requires of certificate of occupancy, regardless if you are doing RBTR or renting the whole house.

Hi @Sean Robbins, welcome to BP. I’m also looking at Dallas proper for my next investment! The Bishop Arts area is particularly enticing. What’s your strategy for financing the fix and flip? 

@Denton Lewis may be able to refer some title companies. The acquisition company he works for does many double closings.

Yo @Brandon Craig

At best you would be able to break even if you turned a 600k property into a LTR, but you would need to rent out each room invidiually to make it work. $700 per room for a luxury home is not too far fetched, which would put gross rents at $3500. Your PITI is probably around $3300 with 20% down, that leaves $200 for reserves. Assuming tenants would also be paying utilities. You will probably need to self manage as most property managers will not do RBTR.

The silver lining here is that the area you described near the Zoo has a ton of potential for appreciation. IMO, the path of progress is heading towards Bishop Arts/Oak Cliff/Cedar Crest area which is where your property is. It might be the hood now but what about in 10 years?

Hey James, welcome to BP and thanks for sharing the beginning of your journey! Multi-family properties are a great move, but are incredibly competitive in DFW as I’m sure you can imagine. I’d be happy to help you in any way I can if you’d like to connect; I’m a somewhat new investor in town and a soon-to-be real estate agent. I’ve started off my journey with 2 houses hacks in back-to-back years, and am looking to do a 3rd early next year.

Feel free to reach out any time.

I use apartments.com. They do background check, credit report, and eviction history whenever the tenant applies. I also use apartments.com for leases and collecting payments (direct deposit via ACH transfer).

If you are going to be renting by the room, consider looking for a property where you easily could add additional bedrooms to the home in order to increase gross rents. I added 2 bedrooms to my most recent house hack which put it into positive cash flow territory. 

Hey Chris,

I’m a new investor in the DFW area. I got my start with a house hack in Plano just last year, and am finishing up renovations on my 2nd house hack in Arlington. I’m also in the process of obtaining my sales agent license. I would love to connect!

Matt Solis

@sellwithsolis on IG

Hi Josh, I’ve got two properties in DFW and utilize the RBR strategy.

Usually cities have a limit on the amount of unrelated persons you can have under one roof. It's usually around 4 for most municipalities. The city doesn't care if the lease is one year or 6 months or 3 months. As long as the term of the lease is longer than 30 days, it's not considered a STR. As long as the city doesn't require a certificate of occupancy (I believe Garland does), there is no additional paperwork you need to fill out.

If house hacking was absolutely out of the question, and I only had 10k to get started, I would look into seller financing. You can get a property with the seller holding the note, and can negotiate the terms much easier than you could with a bank. I’ve heard of investors using this strategy with as little as 3k down to acquire a property. You would need to do a ton of prospecting to find a deal like this, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

Although, house hacking would be much preferred for a beginner. I would say you need about 30k to get started in this market.