All Forum Posts by: Ron Gallagher

 I am very grateful that you hate my forever home @Russell Brazil and were able to negotiate a lower price accordingly! 

Ask for $15,000 in seller closing help when you make your offer.

@Andrew Buchwach

I am living the dream!  Life is good, and I am about to quit my W-2 job since I have replaced my W-2 income with rental income, so life is about to get even better!

Here are the details of this house hack-- I don't know how to link to my individual post but if you scroll down a little bit on this page you will see my house hacking story that includes the numbers and details you are asking about:
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/48/topics/678444-house-hacking-research-tell-me-your-story?page=3

My plan if I move out will be to continue to rent out all the rooms upstairs and also rent out the basement unit after I move out, and then I'll make about $4000 a month in cash flow from this property.

@Arthur C. I wouldn't live in Trinidad because of the history of crime there as you mentioned, and my perception is that it hasn't gotten any better.  This was confirmed when I took an uber pool through Trinidad last year, I saw what looked to be prostitutes on the street corner and when two young blond girls got in my shared uber I asked them how the neighborhood was improving and they told me they were just coming from their friend's place in Trinidad and that friend had just moved to Trinidad a week before and that she was robbed the night before. Thus confirming my perception.

Also, I am still suffering from PTSD from living in Columbia Heights in 2003 when it was really ghetto (it's still pretty ghetto today if I am being honest) and I had my house broken into and robbed, crackhead hookers turned tricks in my backyard, etc. So after all that drama, I proclaimed I would never live in a "transitional neighborhood" ever again.
 

Like @Russell Brazil said, duplexes are extremely rare in DC and they are usually located in neighborhoods I wouldn't want to live in (Trinidad, EOTR, etc.). I would switch your thinking from looking for that elusive unicorn duplex in a nice neighborhood which you will have to pay a premium for because it's a rare multi-family property in DC, to looking for a house with an english basement, like I think you are suggesting by buying a home in Brookland.  If you buy a 1-unit, single family home with a basement unit then you are essentially buying a duplex, it's just not a legal 2-unit. 

I currently live in the basement of a rowhouse in Columbia Heights and rent out all the bedrooms upstairs-- I live in almost a $1MM home (recently appraised for $960k) in a nice area, my tenants have paid every single one of my monthly PITI payments since I placed tenants upstairs the first month I owned the house, and I make $2000 a month in cash flow off the upstairs bedrooms. So I am getting paid $2000 a month to live in a nice neighborhood in a unit that I love and in 30 years my upstairs tenants will have bought me the house.

I just filled two vacant rooms in a group house in Petworth-- I use craigslist, zillow, zumper (although the leads through that website are questionable), and Facebook DC room for rent groups.  I did find the interest to be a little less than normal but I just attributed that to the fact that it is January.  Also, I had crappy pictures for the rooms, so I replaced the light bulbs with bright white 800 lumens flood lights and staged the rooms a little bit and took new, better pics and that seemed to help boost interest enough to get more people to come out to the open house which eventually lead to me getting the two new tenants in place.    

@Uju Anyanwu I accepted a tenant with a drug possession (not pot) charge, dismissing it as something that happened years ago and now the tenant is a good citizen, but then (you guessed it) they got arrested again a few months into the 12-month lease they signed with me.  A BUNCH OF DRAMA ensued and after that I declared I would never rent to a tenant with a criminal record again.  I was so traumatized by it all that I would think twice about renting to someone that got a jay walking ticket!

It's very likely you can find a townhouse with a dining room or basement.. whats the unlikely part?

Are there any rooms in the townhouse that you could turn into an additional bedroom?  Like a separate dining room that never gets used or space in the basement?   If you could turn that 2-bedroom into a 3-bedroom or even 4-bedroom then the additional rents you could get from the extra bedrooms could turn this cash flow loser into a cash flow winner.

You could move into the property, the new airbnb law doesn't restrict short term rentals for your primary residence.