New to Real Estate · Member since 2020 · 15 posts · 5 votes
Hello all,
I am a new REI investor in the Greater Atlanta area. My cousin and I are working together to invest in RE. I was initially looking for multifamily deals but the deals have been slim to none so I have expanded my scope to single family residential househacking.
Can anyone please provide any best practices? What to look for to qualify a SF as a good house hack? How do I figure out fair rent price when it comes to renting out rooms (I have used BP insights before to calculate rent for properties not rooms)? Looking to have an accurate as possible rent in order to calculate if the deal is good.
I have been seeing various different types of SFs ranging from ones with 4+ rooms to others with finished basement, others with additional dwelling units and some have garages. I am definitely super excited and pumped to get into my first property!
Can't wait to hear some of your experience with Single family house hacks! :)
This really depends on your strategy of choice. Will you be renting by the room or do you want your own space (with or without your cousin)? If you're fine with the rent by the room scenario, you can search for pretty much any sized home. However, one thing to keep in mind for this situation is how you will rent the property after you move out. Rent by the room is quite tough to manage once you no longer live there. Take a look at Padsplit if this is a route you want to go - they help manage rent by the room properties. If you plan to just rent the whole property to a single family, you will want to make sure it cash flows for this situation.
The other option is to search for SFHs with mother-in-law suites or ADUs. This is our preferred strategy since we have our own private space, separate from our tenants. For this strategy, I would recommend searching for 4+ bd and 2+ ba. You will also want pretty decent sqft. - at least 2k. You may be tempted to search by properties that specifically mention having a mother-in-law or ADU, but many agents do not correctly select this box when listing properties so you could miss one. Our favorite type of setup here would be something on one story because basement units are typically tougher to rent than something on the ground floor. However, the finished basement setup is the most common mother-in-law suite you'll see.
Hope this helps a bit! Please, feel free to reach out anytime if you have other questions or just want to chat!