All Forum Posts by: Ryan Thomson

@Hossam Elaskalani I wish I was thinking like you when I graduated. It took me several years to get to that mindset. 

Since I have though, I have purchased three house hacks in the last two years. The first one was 4 bedrooms and a garage conversion. I rented out the rooms to friends and Airbnb'd the garage. I lived for free and made $1700 above the mortgage. 

I repeated the same process the next year. The airbnb rules changed so I can't airbnb the current garage, but it's really nice and next to UCCS so I rent it for $1500 a month and the 4 rooms for $600 a month ($2400) for a total of $3900/month.

Now I live in a duplex and airbnb the bottom unit. It pays my mortgage and then some. 

All that to say if you are willing to hustle a little bit, be creative, cash flow is very possible in Colorado Springs. Although I will say, I'm probably approaching my limit of what I can manage on my own and how much I can scale with this strategy. But it has offered a lot of financial freedom with a couple years of hard work. 

@Shai Flax Here are some criteria I look for in a SFH house hack: an easy way to split into multiple units, a walk out basement, an ADU, a garage I could convert, or lots of bedrooms.

@Austin Haynes the best thing I've done is declare all my rental income on my tax returns. This allows me to use that rental income to effectively zero out my mortgage debt and use my w-2 income to qualify for the next home in a year. 

For resources I really like the following House Hacking episodes on Bigger Pockets Podcast: #352, #252, #350, and #249. Also, Craig Curelop's book on House Hacking is a great resource.

@Benjamin Hewitt and @Randy Bloch Great answers. How does one find a fee based CFP that is not incentivized to tell me to put my money in a fund his company manages? 

@Bruce Horner could avoid the 20% downpayment by making it a vacation home on airbnb and putting down 10% as a vacation rental loan. 

@Dionne Rodriguez You should only have to put 3.5%-5% down on FHA if you refinance the first one. However, you may want to refinance the first one as an investment property or you may have trouble getting the owner occupant loan for the second one.

Could also go conventional loan at 5% for the second one. Unless you are going to buy a multifamily, the FHA is not much more valuable than a conventional (maybe worse). 1.5% less in downpayment, PMI for the life of the loan, higher interest rate, stricter closing requirements, some sellers see the FHA loan as less of a qualified buyer (making it a challenge in a competitive market). If you are going multifamily being able to put down 3.5% for a duplex instead of 15% is a huge advantage of FHA though.

Love it! 

My first house hack: House Hack with an airbnb. SFH with 4 bedrooms. Live in one. Rent the other three. Converted one of the garages into a studio kitchenette apartment by using a 20K personal loan. The airbnb nets me $1450 every month and the bedrooms rent for $1800 total. On a $1550 mortgage I am grossing $3250 on rent every month.

Love a good meet up! If you are ever in Colorado Springs we'd love to have you come to ours.

@Jack Perfett I use quicken and have a different bank account for each property. This works pretty well. I make sure I keep all the budgeted CapEx, maintenance, and vacancy in that bank account.

I make the old tenants turn in their keys and then I pass that key to the next tenant. 

I like Schlage smart locks. You can easily change combos and give them to tenants. Not wifi compatible, but very simple.