House Hacking a Single Family within Year 1 of Mortgage.

[Peter McCauley]

I’m currently looking at purchasing a 3 bedroom / 2 bathroom Single Family as a first time home buyer. I want to live in one bedroom and fill the other two bedrooms with “Tenants” / old college friends that have agreed to pay rent if I purchased the house.

I’m very green and brand new to real estate investing so I wanted to make sure this was something actually feasible. I will be taking out a mortgage, but I won’t be putting 20% down and declaring it an income property, however, it will still be my primary residence. Do you still need to put 20% down on a house hack and let the lender know?

Also in terms of collecting rent, would I need a lease agreement, and account for this during tax season. Would anything happen if I just collected the money to pay the mortgage with no real book keeping? I just don’t want to commit either lender or tax fraud in the process. 

  Also for clarification, I plan on purchasing a Single family home in the next 6 months, live there for at least a year, then move out and turn it into a rental. However, if my old college friends want to live with me and help with the mortgage I thought it to be a great house hacking scenario.

Thank you for any and all advice.

Pete