All Forum Posts by: Miller McSwain

I'm not sure exactly what your strategy is, but here is my list of sites for each strategy. I'm currently rent-by-rooming, so I haven't used all the sites listed. I just compiled this list for whenever I do use another strategy.

Traditional Long Term Rental:
- Zillow
- Realtor.com
- Hotpads
- FB Marketplace
- FB Groups
- Apartments.com
- Craigslist

Rent-by-room Rental:
- FB Marketplace
- FB Groups
- Zillow
- Roomies.com
- Roomiapp.com

Short-Term-Rental:
- Airbnb
- VRBO
- Flip Key
- Booking.com

Medium-Term Rental
- Furnished Finders
- Kopa.co
- Airbnb (with 30 day minimum stay)

Great question! You are allowed to have more than 1 owner-occupant loan at a time. So theoretically, you could House-Hack 1 per year, getting a new owner-occupant loan each time.

You may hit some limits that would keep you from acquiring 1 per year with conventional financing indefinitely.
1. Freddie/Fannie allow you to have 10 conventional loans at any time.
2. To qualify for a loan, the lender looks at your Debt-to-Income ratio (DTI). Your debt is the amount you owe in mortgages each month, and your income is your personal income and your rental income. So if you have too many negatively cash flowing properties, you may eventually have a DTI that is conventionally unlendable.
*DTI calculation can be a bit complex. Depending on how long you've had a property, they may not consider your rental income (I think), and they may not count short-term-rental income (I think). Also, DTI can include Insurance and Taxes as part of your Debt (I think). So definitely reach out to a professional, 😂.

I'm renting-by-room, but I considered furnished medium-term-rentals (like you are discussing), and STR.

One reason you may not want to go the MTR route is that it can be difficult to find a manager in that space, at least in my market.
If you are willing to self manage of if there is a manager in your market, it could be a great strategy though! More cash flow/more work than LTR and less cash flow/less work than a STR.

So it is kind of a sweet spot :)

@Ben Einspahr @Chris Lopez
🚀 I had a blast explaining how we were able to house hack early by being proactive.

If anyone is looking to invest in Colorado Springs, definitely reach out to Chris. He, and his company, are the best in the business for serving investors. In fact, Ben's primary job is to coach House Hackers! An incredible amount of value that you likely won't find with another brokerage.

I can't wait to come back onto the podcast and discuss future acquisitions 🚀

Ah good question. We include all utilities, internet, lawn care, etc in that rent amount I discussed. We have 5 bedrooms, so splitting it up would take some additional work but it's doable. 

It is customary to include utilities in my market though, so I think it would be difficult to rent it for the current amount of we didn't include utilities. 

We are currently House Hacking in Colorado Springs, and we plan to move our property into an LLC in less than a year when we move out.

1 thing to consider: although it may be cheaper, by a few hundred dollars, to set it up yourself or with an online service, we plan to use an asset protection specialist so that we can start building that relationship. This isn't a hobby for us, we plan to expand, so having a good asset protection strategy (long-term) will be very important. 

Just to give you a data point, I am rent-by-rooming in Colorado Springs. I found that the total rent for RbR to be 1.55 x the the traditional long-term rental rate. 

That may help give you a ballpark 👍

@Anthony C Palacino
I have not. I've heard of people finding VAs on onlinejobs.ph and upwork.com . These could be good starting points. 
Also, there are probably more expensive VA services that have already been trained to Cold Call. Finding some of those may also be a good option.

I found that US Bank offers personal lines of credit for $5k-$20k at 10% interest with no annual fee.
I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to have access to this for a rehab overage, black swan event, etc.

Does anyone know how simply having access to this, but not actively using it, will affect my personal credit? I am buying my first property in 5-8 months and would hate to mess with my credit score.

Thanks!

I'm in the same boat as you @Hossam Elaskalani
I'm graduating in May 2022 with an engineering degree, and then I'll move out to Colorado Springs.
Personally, I will be doing something similar to your option 1. My fiancee and I will purchase a 4-5 bed house to house-hack (renting the rest of the house by-the-room), purchasing with a 3-5% down owner-occupied loan. We will repeat the process of moving out and acquiring another house hack with low down-payments multiple times.

After moving out, we will use an enhanced cash flow method, rather than LTR, to ensure these properties cash flow. We will likely continue renting-by-the-room, but short-term-rental and corporate/medium-term rentals are also options.

If you want to learn more about the Springs market, I'd HIGHLY recommend checking out @Jenny Bayless and @Chris Lopez "Colorado Springs Real Estate Investing Podcast". They interview local investors, discuss market updates, and more.