All Forum Posts by: Shelly Shanks

Hello,

My husband and I recently decided to sell our house and buy a duplex to house hack. We are having a very difficult time finding a duplex that is in decent condition, in a good area, for the right price. We have a realtor that has been working like crazy getting our house ready to sell and showing us properties to buy. We don't know what to do. What if we can't find a place and our house sells? Should we just buy a single family home? We wanted to move anyway to get into a better school district for our kids. We originally weren't planning to do that for a few years until our kids were school age, but maybe we should now to take advantage of the high real estate prices now? We are really confused and conflicted. Any advice is appreciated. 

We were using a calculator app for figuring out monthly cash flow and returns. Figuring out all the numbers is tricky, so we very well could be putting in the wrong numbers. We were originally thinking about house hacking, but the neighborhood is not a good one for our young kids. The lender said we could still get a FHA loan as long as the rents covered 75% of the mortgage. I questioned this because I had heard it had to be owner occupied, and they have been wrong about other things. With a 5% down, interest rate of 4.5% after expenses we were looking at $840 cash flow, so we thought that was good. Thank you all for your knowledge!

Hello,

My husband and I are newbies. We are interested in purchasing a 4plex. We found a deal for 125K that is completely rented for 1750/month. We live in St.Louis, Mo where rent/properties are fairly cheap. The numbers are good. Here's the problem. This place has been under contract 3 different times, but it fell through each time. There are foundation issues. It has been pierred and fixed by a professional company, but that makes me nervous. Also, the plumbing stacks need to be replaced. Those are the issues we know about before the inspection. Would you make an offer? 

Yeah, we've never analyzed a deal. I'm assuming reading more on biggerpockets is a good start? Any book recommendations?

My husband and I found a 4plex that we are interested in. We have never analyzed a deal or anything previously and know that is the first step. We plan on looking into the numbers tonight using the calculators on biggerpockets. This property needs a lot of work. Our plan is the live in one unit and rent the others out. It's really scary to think about figuring out if this is a good deal, finding good contractors, selling our house, finding temporary housing, etc. Any suggestions for a complete newbie?

Hello,

I am brand new to this forum as well as real estate. My husband and I would like to purchase a new home in two years to get our kids in a better school district. Initially we planned to put 20% down to avoid pmi. I've been thinking maybe it would be better to put less down so we could have money left over to also purchase an investment property or we've also considered purchasing a duplex and renting one side out. We are trying to decide what is the best way to go about getting into real estate that makes sense for us. Any suggestions would be appreciated.