Hey everyone. I’m working toward my first property as a house-hack: buy a 2–4 unit, live in one side, rent the rest, using FHA at 3.5% down. I come from a finance/underwriting background, so I’ve been running the numbers pretty hard, and I want to sanity-check my read with people who are actually doing this in the area.
Here’s my hang-up. Between today’s interest rates, Florida’s insurance costs, and the property-tax reassessment that hits after you buy, almost every duplex I’ve underwritten around Tampa fails to cash-flow as a straight rental — most run a few hundred dollars negative per month once you stack FHA’s 96.5% LTV and the monthly mortgage insurance on top. So I’ve shifted to evaluating them on a net-housing-cost basis instead: how much the other unit’s rent knocks off my own payment. On that basis it still beats renting, but I want to stay realistic about it.
I’ve analyzed duplexes in Tampa proper plus Lehigh Acres, Cape Coral, Port Charlotte/North Port, Punta Gorda, and even Ocala. The pattern I keep hitting: the cheap markets also have cheap rents, so a low price alone doesn’t get me to breakeven. The one bright spot so far has been the Kissimmee/Osceola area — higher rents from the tourism economy, plus a low where a true 3-bed/2-bath-per-side duplex actually gets close to breakeven even at FHA leverage.
A few questions for the group:
1. Is house-hacking in Tampa and the surrounding ~50 miles still realistic right now, or have rates + insurance pushed it out of reach for new buyers?
2. Which nearby submarkets actually favor house-hacking today? Polk County / Lakeland? Kissimmee? The North Port / Port Charlotte corridor? Somewhere I haven’t looked?
3. If you’re house-hacking locally, what are your real numbers — especially insurance premiums and the size of the post-purchase tax jump?
4. Anyone gone 3–4 units on FHA and cleared the self-sufficiency test? Curious how hard that’s been in this market.
Appreciate any real-world input, especially from folks who’ve actually closed in the last year. Thanks in advance!
