Updated over 5 years ago on . Most recent reply
Rental Calculator vs. Owner-Occupied Multi-Plex
When analyzing a multi-plex for an owner-occupied situation, how do people account for your (the owner) slice of the rental income? Do you:
A) Consider yourself a "renter" for the purposes of the monthly rental income and include a reasonable amount of rent for your unit. While you wouldn't assume this "rent" as an expense for the purposes of the analysis, you would still assume that you are paying this rent at the end of the month. This doesn't mean that you live for free, but the smaller you can make this portion the better, as long as the numbers still work.
B) Include $0 for yourself because living for free is a nice perk if you can make it work. The trouble I'm finding is that this never works because leaving one full unit empty rent-wise just isn't feasible.
C) Exclude yourself from the rental income, but then account for it at the end and assume that you will make up any negative cash flow as your portion of the rent. For example, I live in an apartment and pay about $1700/month. If my multi-plex analysis has a negative cash flow of $1700 or less then it seems like this would be a good deal for me because I can easily cover that overage.
D) Something else altogether.
Let me know your thoughts and how you approach analyzing multi-plex deals, Also let me know if any of these options have fatal flaws or if they just need to be tweaked a tad. Thanks.