All Forum Posts by: Aaron Zimmerman

I would not wait to find a property. From what I hear, it's quite the hot market in Chicago and you may end up spending a significant chunk of time so you may only have to find a subletter or you may just have to eat it for a bit. With the amount of cash saved, you should be able to find a property, have an emergency fund for the property, and be able to pay for additional costs. Plus, you have 30 to 60 days to move in from the time of purchase, so it allows you time to not rush the move out. 

I'd say the house hack is a lower risk way because you're using it to reduce your housing expenses. 

I just purchased a house hack in Irving Park in December 2019. Please let me know if you'd like to connect. I always love talking with Chicago area investors. 

I second what John Warren said. The previous owner had pay range along with coin operated laundry and it has worked really really well. 

I have coin operated but if you want to get past that, you can use this app called Payrange. It's absolutely fantastic. You set it up with your washer and dryer. Tenants are able to pay electronically. 

I doubt that people would come over to use the laundry. If you can, I'd probably do in unit laundry and charge $50-100. Depending on how much they cost, you'd be able to recoup that money back pretty easily. However, if you don't have water hookup or dryer for the units, I'd probably just have common laundry.  

House hacking is a fantastic way to get started with real estate. Biggest things are making sure it cash flows when you leave, knowing who your tenant pool is, and then liking the area that you're going to be living in. I'm not from Columbus but I feel like these things apply to any market. 

Welcome to the Chicago area. I just got started with house hacking in Irving Park using an FHA loan. It's a fantastic way to get into the Chicago market for a relatively low down payment option. Happy to answer any questions you may have and always happy to connect!

@Eamonn McElroy appreciate you pointing that out. I took a look at that code section and I would say your analysis makes sense as well. 

How do you plan to the purchase the property? Cash? FHA?

I would do everything in your power to make sure you have appropriate documentation. Like Eamonn said, you likely won't be paying much in taxes, if any. And if you make under $150,000, you'll be able to report a loss based on your facts described. 

In general, I would probably get leases anyway, just to build your systems and make your mistakes amongst friends. 

From what it seems like though, it is a rental. You should then divide out by the amount of bedrooms (i.e. if you're renting out three bedrooms and living in one), you'd get to apportion 75% of your expenses and basis for your rental. Then, when you move out, you would then start depreciating the remaining 25%. 

Following

#1: What you can do is break rental vs personal via a couple of methods: Square footage, numbers of rooms. So if you bought a duplex and one unit is three bedrooms and yours is one bedroom, you'd be able to break out 75% for rental, 25% for rental.

#6: I do my own taxes too and I'm a CPA. The way I describe it is that it's just complicated enough where you would probably want to hire it out and make sure it's right. At the very least, I'd probably get someone who's familiar with RE taxation to review your tax return. 

All other items, I think @Nicholas Aiola hit the nail on the head.