All Forum Posts by: Robert Johnson

Quote from @Ryan Kelly:

@Robert Johnson the city itself just raised the number of unrelated adults allowed to live in the home, so that's not a major challenge anymore. I would focus more on HOA restrictions, zoning, and parking restrictions if you are going to have that many people living in one home. Parking may be your biggest issue if too many cars pile up on the streets. That's what will get the neighbor's attention. If you add additional bedrooms, I would also consider the bedroom-to-bathroom ratio so you don't have too many roommates needing to share a bathroom. Also, you may want to consider how much common area space remains if you close it all off to bedrooms. At the end of the day, the most important factor is location.

Doing a quick MLS search, there are only 2 homes in the Austin city limits with 6+ bedrooms that aren't well over $1M in price. The rest of them are out in the suburbs. More than likely you would want to focus on 4-5 bedroom homes and see if they have room to add a 6th.

 Thanks for this Ryan! Does Austin have restrictions on parking availability? I've been looking for homes where I can see adequate street parking from Google Maps satellite view.

Hey everyone I'm looking to do a coliving house hack in Austin, TX and I'm curious if there are any restrictions preventing this? I know Austin just passed the Home initiative (https://www.homecoalitionatx.com/) which apparently is lifting the ban on the number of unrelated adults living in a home. 

I'm exploring the idea of turning a 6 bedroom into an 8 bedroom and am curious if there are any restrictions preventing me from doing this? Are there restrictions on the number of bedrooms per square footage or other things I should be considering? Would there be any issue having each of them on individual leases?

I'm a newbie investor and am looking at coliving / house hacking. When calculating cash flow a big question mark for me is CapEx. In one of the BP books it gives this CapEx spreadsheet to break it down by item. I understand that the age and quality of the home will impact when these expenses become due, but I'm curious if I could get somebody in the Austin area to take a look at the estimates I put in here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jgP6aod25qWJzKWQXhto...

I'm exploring a house hack opportunity but want to make sure that the property will cash flow once I decide to move out. I live in Austin, TX so the property prices are high here and I can't seem to find much of anything that will cash flow as a LTR. Given that there's a higher income opportunity I'm wondering if doing the rent-by-the-room strategy might work? Does anyone have experience doing a rent-by-the-room strategy remotely? Are there property management companies that manage rent-by-the-room properties?

From my understanding, long-term rental income is not considered "earned income" but what about the income from a STR or MTR if I self-manage the rental?

I'm exploring the idea of buying a single-family home in South Austin and turning the garage into a self-contained living space that I would live in and rent out the main house. The idea would be to use that space as a STR after I moved out. I'm curious if there are experienced investors in Austin that can tell me how complicated the process would be to do this in terms of permits, zoning, etc. Also, any general ideas about this strategy in general.

Quote from @V.G Jason:

You'll attract the wrong tenants here. I would advise against this, I don't think it's in path of progress but I may very well be wrong.

If you do a duplex, the other side right now is at best section 8 tenants. quality wise. 

Go east austin or SW if it's budget focused.

Thanks for this. I'm also looking to house hack in Austin and I see quite a few properties in the Montopolis and other areas of SE Austin. Any thoughts on those neighborhoods?

I'm finding rates ranging from 3-10% of monthly income for each of these across different sources. This obviously has a huge impact on analyzing the cash flow of a potential property. Reading the BP 2024 report the advice is to be conservative so up until now I've been analyzing everything with:

Vacancy - 10%

Repairs - 10%

Cap Ex - 5% (although this is highly dependent on the age of the home and the value of the home, so I'm tracking that with a bit more nuance)

Any advice? Am I being too conservative?

Quote from @Michael Baum:

Hey @Robert Johnson, looks like a nice place. That rooftop deck is pretty cool.

Direct lake front properties about that size are around $200-250 a night.

Does that neighborhood have a beach or boat ramp nearby? Are they any restrictions on STRs?

Calendars are a mix. The more expensive units near the lake look about 30% full for the year right now overall.

I don't know the area super well, but I'm considering driving out this weekend as they're doing an open house. The listing says it's STR approved. There's another property for sale that is listed on airbnb at the moment but I don't see any bookings for the upcoming 2 months. Not too far away there's a group of 16 or so bungalows specifically set for airbnb - https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14069226?adults=1&children=...

Quote from @Matt Mertz:

The price makes me wonder if STRs are allowed there.

There are a lot of properties available on airbnb. The listing also states that it's approved for STR.