@Chaithra Kumar If you're moving here, probably the best way is to buy a 4 or 5 bedroom house with 3 or 4 bathrooms in a non-HOA neighborhood. Live in one of the bedrooms and rent the others.
@Chaithra Kumar If you're moving here, probably the best way is to buy a 4 or 5 bedroom house with 3 or 4 bathrooms in a non-HOA neighborhood. Live in one of the bedrooms and rent the others.
Thanks @Bruce Lynn. how about constructing 2 townhomes on a lot. i have a family and kid so sharing room would not be ideal, i know its hard to find any duplexes in residential neighbourhoods. i am thinking either work with builder to build 2 townhomes on a lot or buy a distressed SFH and add additional unit with rezoning.
@Chaithra Kumar I think rezoning in most areas will not be possible to turn a single family into multi family. Most cities just don't like it around here right now. The building inspectors say the streets weren't built for it and the utilities weren't built for it and the neighbors don't like turning single family neighborhood into multi.
I think new construction almost never works well for investment. The numbers just don't work well in most cases around here. Purchase price too high vs rent too low.
You might do better to just buy a home that you want to live in, that's in a nice neighborhood with good schools, and then buy a second home for investment that might be cheaper and in a different area that makes more sense to get a combination of rent vs purchase price.
Most duplexes are in residential neighborhoods....but may not be the neighborhood you want to live in or in single family neighborhoods. Seems like most of the duplex 3-4plex grouped together in certain neighborhoods. We don't have lots and lots of duplexes, but we do have some. You just have to decide if you want to house hack or if you want to live in a nicer single family neighborhood that your family might like better.
Of course there can always be exceptions to all this, but that's my thoughts and experience.
@Chaithra Kumar it seems like a lot of the houses in Dallas proper have ADUs so even though they're SFR there's still a house-hacking opportunity that might fit your family. If that interests you it would broaden your search beyond multifamily. I don't know the dallas regulations regarding renting those though.
@Chaithra Kumar Actually we don't have a lot of ADU in Dallas. City is looking at it, but it has been a long process. The few garage type ADU we have are fairly expensive and fairly limited. You can check more information out about ADU here:
On June 27, 2018, City Council approved two different options, each with very specific regulations, that would allow Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) to be built and/or rented. However, action is required by the City (on one of the two options below) before an ADU can be built. ADUs are not allowed to be built by right in most cases.
Thanks a lot @Bruce Lynn.i will explore that as well. There are lot of builders coming up with new homes. May be i can work with them to customize, but also i ll explore different options.
@Bruce Lynn why would you not recommend to house hack in property that has an HOA? Is it mainly because you do not think the numbers will work out, or is it because HOAs have rules against house hacking?
@Jorge Barrera Many HOAs have rules against non-related persons living together. Lots of people in HOAs seem to like clean and uniform....so when you get multiple people coming and going and multiple cars, people notice and complain. Some prohibit short term rentals and have rental restrictions. While you could get around it, I've seen HOAs change the rules, so might be risky to get in one of the neighborhoods on this type of financial plan only to see the rules change.
@Bruce Lynn That makes sense to me, especially the point on the short term rentals. I guess I am just not sure how an HOA can regulate who your roommate is, as long as they are your long term roommate. Am I making sense? But you are right that it will always be a risk that the rules can change, and usually not worth fighting an HOA.
@Jorge Barrera HOAs regulate all kinds of things. They can limit the # of rentals, the type of pets, if owner occupants or renters can have pets, where you park, flag poles, types of landscaping, amount of landscaping, if you can park a boat or an RV and for how long, what size of house you build, how fast you have to build it, the amount of brick you have on it, what types of flags you can fly...and on and on and on. If you have one roommate, probably not a big deal most places, but househacks...people want 3-4-5-6 roommates and that is often a problem for the neighbors.