All Forum Posts by: Samantha Magina

Hi Natalie, My husband is content to listen to my goals and okay with me using our mutual funds to acquire our first property, he was even okay with me continuing on this path after my first attempt at a duplex house hack fell through leaving us apartment hopping. He would not be okay in any situation or scenario renting out bedrooms in our home, especially since we have 2 toddlers. This comes down to figuring out where his limits are, which sounds like renting out part of your home, and where he's open to compromise. Have an honest conversation. I know my husband has zero interest in doing any hands on renovations on a flip property or a rental (though he acquired a lot of skills from our SFH we owned) , he only wants me looking at properties that I can afford to pay a contractor to renovate. You sound like you are trying to house hack like a single professional, not as a married couple with children. Have you considered a 3 family or changing your property location to a nearby town that does have duplexes? Is your husband okay with you being a landlord at all or does he not like house hacking bc he doesn't want to near the tenants?

I'm still in the evaluation stage of finding my first rental but I have decided that for rentals I want to have a minimum of $200/ month/ unit of cash flow after all expenses and capex and vacancy. This property would not have hit my criteria without flood insurance. But that said the combined insurance (regular and flood) is less than most properties here in MA. Personally I think your numbers indicate poor cash flow if $2k a year ruins the deal.

I'm confused, does Thomas Townsend have any rentals or did he just invest / develop the app?

The title is a bit misleading. Presumably the laundry is clean. Do you address it in your lease? What are they allowed to do in the common space? Are they made aware that no personal items can be outside at anytime because you are not renting any outdoor space to them? Getting into a screaming match with the tenant doesn't look great for anyone involved, particularly over something like (clean) laundry. Is this really worth evicting over or are they already troublesome tenants?

Devils advocate, if you charged a $25 a month pet rent with a non refundable pet deposit for the guaranteed floor replacement, think of how much extra cash you'd make if the next tenant with pets stays 12 years! You could just pay someone to do the floor repair then and voila lovely fresh flooring for next tenant :). That said, in my own personal home our cat stopped using her litter box and we fought the good fight and solved the problem in under a month and cleaned the afflicted area daily and still had to pull the carpet and the one sheet of subfloor she targeted. It was terrible, I can't fathom 12 years.

I would be shocked if she doesn't switch back to paying you by check. She paid on the 30th and you are saying she should be paying 5 days earlier? What about holidays and weekends? That could get crazy! If she gives you a check in the 1st it won't get cashed until the 2nd at the earliest. I fail to see the incentive to pay online with current policies. No matter what just the implications he should pay late will leave a bad taste in her mouth and I bet you have issues next month too.

I think you may have trouble if there is not a second egress. I'm not familiar with the codes in your city/ town. The duplex itself is not an issue for FHA

I've been hunting all the available quads in Attleboro for a while. Curious which property you got. I have been holding out on buying in hopes of using fha financing on a quad and do owner occupy. Message me if you need to pass and want move the opportunity to someone else.

This is an issue in my area, I keep seeing properties pop up with descriptions like 'legal 2 family with 3rd apartment'. I think Amy time you have a zoning discrepancy finding will get challenging. Have you called the municipality to get more information?

What did you decide? Unknown tenants make me nervous, but then again so do tenants in bad apartments that are content living there.