Did I make a mistake purchasing this home?

[Lee V.]

Hi all,

I purchased my first property earlier this year. It is a triplex set up. However, it’s quite Unique. It’s 3 single family homes (bungalow style) on one piece of land. The homes do not share any walls. I’m living in the main home and renting the 2 others out. The property is in an up and coming area” of Houston. 3 miles from downtown. Lots of older homes around but new town homes being built all around.

Now onto the numbers.

I bought this home for $243,000. I went with an fha Loan with 4.5% interest and 3.5% down payment.

My mortgage is $1,812.00. I currently rent one of my homes for $900 and the other for $700 respectively. If I were to rent the main home that I’m living in too, it would rent for about $1200-$1300 or so, market value.

My question is... did I do well on this deal? Or was it a bad deal? I figured, it’s not so bad since my rental income is covering most of my mortgage note. Since I’m living in one of the units, it’s like living for free practically.

What are your thoughts on this deal?? 

[Josh C.]

The OP should have used the little known "move the dot rule." It's where you move the decimal point of your purchase price over to the left two places and make sure your rent is more than that. Let's say your house was 100,000.00, just move the point to the left two places 1,000.0000. Shouldn't take 30 seconds either. Move the dot rule. Totally different than those two other dumb rules that no ones understands.

Also, yep, sounds like a good deal. Could be lots of maintenance issues being three different houses. Something to consider anyway.