Saving for a House Hack

[Ethan Tomlinson]

Hello, my name is Ethan Tomlinson. I am a 22 year old college student at BYU-I. It’s been a dream of mine to house hack the moment I have learned of it, which was four years ago. Listening to countless podcasts and reading tons of books, etc. Since then it’s been on my mind. Aged 19-21 I served a mission for my church in the New England area, but since I’ve been home I’ve been saving money. To get to the gist of things…

I'm wondering if anyone in this local area of south east Idaho knows a lot about the process of getting your first house hack. Costs, getting pre-approved for an FHA loan, who to talk to first. Etc

I have two part time jobs and in total I bring home between 2800-3000 a month. I have no debts, I only have to pay for groceries and gas right now so I’m able to save about 2300-2500 each month after paying my living expenses each month.

Other things to know:

My current savings are about 20k and I have 4k in a Roth.

My credit score has been 750+ for quite some time now

I have only had my two w-2 part time jobs for about a couple months, before then a lot of my labor was 1099 or even just being payed cash, and if I remember correctly you need 2 years of income to get approved for an FHA loan generally.

So what steps should I take to inch closer to obtaining a house hack? It’s killing me more and more not being able to start this, i definitely haven’t done any deal analysis in a while with the calculators, but I used to a lot years back. 

if it helps, ask me questions too! I bet I’m overlooking a lot of things. I greatly appreciate all comments and I will listen, as you reading are the likely seasoned veteran, not me.

[Austin McClain]

Congrats on the progress. I've done the house hack strategy in Ohio, and it's gone well. 

Make sure you have some reserves/and an emergency fund after you pay your down payment and closing costs to cover repairs. Something will come up, and you'll want to make sure you have some cash liquid to take care of it without a lot of financial stress.