Intro/My First Deal (House Hacked 4plex)

Welcome, and thanks for reading! This blog will serve as documentation of my real estate journey from absolute beginner through financial independence and early retirement. I have a long way to go to get there, but my goal is to continue slow and steady portfolio growth for the next 10 years so I can comfortably retire early. Without further ado, my first deal:

The deal itself is a 4plex I found as a FSBO on Craigslist, in a B to B- neighborhood. Here are the numbers:

Purchase Price: 0% down on $265k purchase price @ 3.5%. Total loan amount is $270.7k after VA funding fee.

Closing Costs: There’s a great VA loan benefit where the seller can agree to pay up to 4% of the value of the home back to you in closing costs in the form of concessions – most people typically use this (if they can convince the seller) to pay down the VA funding fee. However, since I wanted to leverage to the max, instead of using this to pay off my funding fee, I chose to wrap up my funding fee in the total loan amount, and instead used the seller concessions as debt relief (the seller pays your bills for you – it doesn’t get much better than that!). So I used this to pay off my car loan and a good chunk of my monthly credit card bills with the $2800 I received in concessions. I also received all $1000 of my earnest money back, $1350 in May rents, and received another $650 in fee reimbursement from my mortgage broker. Total closing table gain = $4800.

GOI: $31,290/yr (2650/mo rents - 5% vacancy + $90/mo coin-op laundry)

Operating Expenses: $11,905/yr (assuming 10% maintenance – very conservative for property condition)

NOI: $19,385/yr

Cap Rate: 7.35%

GRM: 100

Current Cash Flow: Using conservative numbers for everything, I should see cash flow of around $364/mo or $91/door (Yes, I am living in, but I perform all analyses as if I am just another rent-paying tenant, since that is how an outside investor would analyze this property). Not bad for 0% down. For comparison, if I had put 20% down, I’d see about $156/door.

By raising rents to market, I should see my GOI increase to 33k. Further, this property is a great candidate for submetering or subdividing the water bill (all other bills are tenant paid), allowing me to further reduce my operating expenses down to $9,676/yr, with little to no increase in my vacancy. This should increase that cash flow by an additional $329/and also force appreciate the property value by about 29k. I am a little skeptical of how long I’ll be able to get away with an expense ratio of about 30% but I triple checked my numbers - I’ll update everyone in a few months to see how this plays out.

By closing on this house I eliminated my car loan of $582/mo, will be cash flowing a projected $364 per month, and paying myself an additional $265/mo to self-manage my properties. This all adds up to a $1211/mo total effective increase in personal cash flow! Yes, my car loan would have been paid off in a few months anyways, and no this isn't what it would look like to an outside investor, but this is my difference I'm seeing to my bank account just by closing this deal.

8 Lessons I learned:

1. Everything is negotiable. The seller initially was unwilling to work with me as I was using an agent to avoid the fees, but when I put a contract in front of his nose with a 2% agent commission listed (my agent’s idea, not mine), the seller signed it with only minor negotiation. People can huff and puff all they want, but it’s what happens when you put paper in front of them that matters.

2. Assume the seller is full of BS - due diligence is king. He gave me ridiculous self-reported numbers for maintenance (0.25%, really!?), vacancy (0%!), insurance, etc. Maybe that’s what he really had, but I came up with my own, more realistic and conservative numbers. Also be prepared for your seller to have incomplete information – either get comfortable with your own estimates or adjust the purchase price accordingly.

3. If you’re looking for a great deal on the MLS, you might be looking for a long time. I spent 5 months looking at everything that came onto the MLS in my area that fits my criteria and have yet to see something I’m comfortable putting an offer on.

4. Object to as much as possible in the inspection objection. This property is pretty turnkey, but I threw in a bunch of minor things into the inspection objection with the idea that the seller would negotiate me out of half of it. Turns out he accepted almost everything I asked for, saving me around $3k in immediate maintenance costs.

5. Try to close at the beginning of the month when possible. I closed May 1, so I received the entire month of May rents but was at the end of the cycle for the escrow interest calculation for the lender so I paid very little there, which is what really allowed me to walk away with so much at closing. If I would have closed on May 2, my first mortgage payment would not be due until July (vs June for May 1), which essentially is like getting an extra month of cash flow for free. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to arrange for a financially viable way to push back past May 1 – lesson learned for next time though!

6. Try to contract the seller into paying as much closing costs as possible. This one is especially important for military taking advantage of concessions - you cap the maximum amount you are eligible to receive back in debt relief at the amount you ask the seller to pay in closing costs on the contract! I didn't know this when I drafted up my contract - if I did, I could have received substantially more (up to 4% = 10.6K) back in debt relief. Fortunately I didn't have enough debt to take advantage of much more than I got, but be aware of what it means to you. Also, by extension, if you have no debt, you can't get paid cash. It has to be applied to existing debts.

7. Shop around for everything. I was originally going to work with a Mortgage Broker who promised to get me $300 of my $1000 earnest money back at closing and I’d pay nothing else – that sounded pretty good to me. But then I reached out to another Broker whom I’d heard good things about and told him what my current offer was. After about 2 days of each broker offering my progressively better deals in hopes of earning my business, I ended up settling on receiving all of my earnest money back, $2800 in debt payoff, $650 in fee reimbursement, and a slightly better interest rate. Same goes for things like insurance – 4 or 5 extra phone calls saved me close to $900/yr.

8. Read everything. Read books, read blog posts, read the forums, read everything. And listen to podcasts when you’re not reading. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way in establishing the confidence to take the first steps into becoming the master of your own financial destiny.

I’d love to field questions from beginner investors on the process or hear feedback from the more experienced investors. I don’t think I totally knocked it out of the park with this one, but I’m definitely extremely happy with the numbers for my first deal (especially for 0% down), and exited to continue onto the next one! Thanks for reading!