All Forum Posts by: Shane Short

Hi everyone!

I'll try to make this not too long of a story, but I want to provide all the details and get some advice and wisdom from everyone, some rental property, but some personal as well. I'm currently twenty-six and living in the Portland, OR area. My girlfriend will be finished with school in one month and will be working in Salem 1 hour away. I work as an engineer in the semi-conductor industry currently and I'm considering going back to school for 4 years to finish my MS in Robotics to make my dreams of becoming a remote robotics engineer a reality. I would also like to build a large real estate portfolio over my lifetime so that I could potentially retire in my 40's-50's and build robotics on my own terms that help make the world a better place without having to focus on a day job.

We have been wanting to purchase a home to live in so that we at least have equity built for when we decide on where we want to settle long-term and build a family, instead of just paying rent and not at least putting that money towards some equity I can get back. Purchasing a home right now geographically and financially makes the most sense for us in Salem, OR. This way I could drive to my 4 day/wk. job in Hillsboro (mostly from home though) in around one hour (nightshift) when I'm needed AND I could go to OSU's Electrical and Computer Engineering/ MS Robotics program just south of Salem 30ish minutes.

Instead of buying a SFR and paying ~2,000/mth. (budget is max. 400k for SFR), I would like to purchase a MFR and house hack so that we only need to pay a few hundred per month to live. Now, normally when I do my practice analysis while I've been saving money to purchase investment properties, I have been doing it under the pre-tense that it would not be owner occupied, has property management, etc. which in Portland and Salem is difficult now. I'm not saying impossible, but I would need to spend a significant amount of time and creativity to find a MFR investment property that is cash flowing right now. In the last year I haven't found any that make sense.

So, what if I bought a MFR to house hack for about 4-5 years that made sense for only the amount of time I chose to live in it? That could be 4-5 years or longer if we choose. Look at my report on this home here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/... This is if it was completely rented out and not owner occupied, it shows a negative cash flow of about $100.00, I also kept rents on the low side of the other comps in the area. BUT, if me and my girlfriend lived in the 2bd/1bth unit and rented the two 3bd/2bth units, we could potentially have the principal & interest covered and live there for free and only cover CapEx/Repairs. Now this is just one example, but I've been doing a few reports and so far, there have been a lot of options to house-hack a MFR that would enable us to live for less than 1k per month, which beats 2k mortgage in an SFR. AND the best part is that after 5ish years of living there we could have around 200k equity built from the tenants and use that to put towards multiple investment properties or our future forever home OR after paying off 150-200k in equity, I could refinance the home for 30 years at what would be around 400k at that point, and I'd have a cash flowing property once I moved and filled the unit we lived in with a tenant.

What do you think? Is this a pipedream? Am I missing something blatantly obvious?

I appreciate your time.

 Hello, I think you're looking at the original report. There were quite a few errors in it. I uploaded Report #2 a few posts down from OP. 

Thanks!

Originally posted by @Stephen Brown:

You forgot to switch you insurance to "monthly" in stead of "annual" in the BP calculator. Is this a duplex? I have a hard time believing that this brings in $2300 per month.

Thanks for your reply Stephen, I looked at 6 comparable duplexes/ apartments within 1-2 miles of the home on the report and all were surprisingly renting from 1.2k - 1.8k. I put mine on the low end of 1150 per side.

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for the valuable information! I took it all in, did further research, saw where I had some typos in my report and fixed it up. New cash flow is 250.00 per month on the low end, not including a catastrophic issue and max 10% vacancy.

Here is Report #2, please let me know if this looks more appropriate!

Also:

- Are there any valuable resources you use for Out of State investing?

- How do you personally find the best deals?

For Notifications: @Mrinal Parashar @Eric Wilkinson @Drew Sygit @Stephen Brown @Tim Herman @Stephanie P. @Account Closed 

Thank you all!

Great tips, I will stress test it more intensely and up my percentages for those expenses. Thank you!

Thanks @Eric Wilkinson! I will definitely heed that advice!

Hi everyone,

My name is Shane, I'm not necessarily new to the investing world as I've been lurking and educating for years now, but I am yet to make the leap of buying a first investment property. However, I think I'm doing something wrong because it seems like I am finding deals (on paper) too easily... Could you please look over one of my example reports and see if I'm missing something? If I can figure out how to attach a report to this lol...

A little background: I currently live in Oregon and have an excellent job that is keeping me here. It pays a lot and requires extraordinarily little time of me each week. I know it won't last forever, and I'd like to use this time to get myself financially free. The problem is that my girlfriend, in the long-term, wants to live in Michigan, sometime over the next 5-7 years. But I know that I will lose about half my salary if I move to Michigan, and I'll work five times as hard. I'd ideally like to start investing now, to be financially free in 5+ years between my Crypto, Stocks, and Real Estate. 

For the first few years it will be out of state investing. I have a lot of family and friends in Michigan that can help and an aunt that wants to invest in real estate as well and is interested in partnering on some rental properties at first. 

I'm not really looking in a specific area in Michigan, but I do like Grand Rapids, Novi/ Farmington Hills, Auburn Hills/ Rochester, Ann Arbor, and Downtown Detroit, all epicenters for Universities or the Technology/Engineering industries. So far, I've mostly been looking at multi-family rentals. 

I've been living in an overpriced area like Portland for too long where my analysis only turns up about 3-400 dollars profit on average, and even that can be hard to find, but using the rental property calculator on here and the rent-o-meter tool I am finding homes in Michigan that can potentially return 800-1000 plus. I will admit, I am searching an ENORMOUS range of areas from lower west coast to lower east coast of Michigan, so maybe that is why. I know I'm missing certain small things like garbage collection, maybe I'm a little low on property management too, but even with an extra like 400 taken out, 700 dollars per month seems too good? Am I missing an elephant in the room or am I a god at finding rental properties?! kidding...

Link to Rent-O-Meter file:  

Link to Bigger Pockets Rental Calculator file: 

Hello,

Does anyone have a financial advisor in the Portland, OR area that they highly recommend? I'd like them to be able to cover a broad range of financial advise including real estate, stocks, retirement planning, college funds, etc. 

I would like to potentially find someone that I can work with long term.

Thanks!

Hey everyone, currently I am living in a 2 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend and a roommate and we split the rent 3 ways. It only cost me about 500 dollars a month to live here, which is great in the Portland Metro area, as I am only 0.3 miles from my day job, near my girlfriends college, etc. I'm pretty content currently where I'm at, and finding a good place for house hacking around here will take some time. 

My original plan was to purchase a house hack here, get situated, then start purchasing rental properties both here, and throughout Detroit Metro (this is home for me and I travel there many times every year). I was wondering though if I wanted to stay in my current renting situation and purchase homes in Detroit to rent with 20% down loans or conventional loans, could I still at a later date purchase my future home here under an FHA loan and qualify? Would I need to purchase the rental homes under my LLC, which ideally I'd like to do anyways?

Any information regarding this would be great!

Thanks for your time!