All Forum Posts by: Alecia Loveless

@Ryan Duphorn I house hacked rooms for about 25 years. For the past 5 or so I’ve lived in one side of a duplex.

There’s definitely a point that you find yourself in anting to move past the rent by the room strategy.

If you still want to build your portfolio look for a duplex or tri plex and live in one unit and rent the others.

This will still offset the cost of living and you’ll regain a lot of your privacy.

We rarely hear our tenant, occasionally if she slams a cabinet, and the bathrooms back up to each other so we can hear the toilet flush occasionally if we’re in the bathroom. Other than that we maybe pass each other in our vehicles once every 10 days.

It's super private and especially if you can find something with separate entrances you'd likely be fine with a multi family instead of a SFH.

@Seth McGathey My realtor has been in the game 30 years. It’s his “retirement” career. If I had to name a specialty for him it would be high end single family houses.

Ive known him probably 28 of his 30 years as a realtor. Over the years he’s never been too busy to send me the listings I want or to take me to see every property I’ve wanted to see. He always makes the time for me even though my multi families aren’t his primary thing.

Recently I scheduled a showing for a 4 plex and had a medical appointment scheduled for an hour and a half before the showing. The medical appointment went overtime and my Realtor showed my contractor the 4 plex and when I showed up they were winding down their tour of the land it was located on. He and my contractor then spent 30 minutes telling me in detail about the property and ultimately why I should not buy it.

He just always makes time for me and no matter how weird the situation gets he’s always spot on with his recommendations. We’ve done 11 deals together and I’m hoping for many more to come.

Make your clients feel like they matter and make time for them.

@Jaime Zarate As long as the numbers work it’s always a good time to buy a house.

No matter what type of property you are looking for you will have to do lots of looking and analyzing before you settle on one.

@Aaron Raffaelli We are required by our mortgage company and our insurance to remove any temporary jacks in the basement and replace them with permanent supports.

I can’t tell totally from your photo if these are the temporary jacks or the permanent type.

It usually only costs me about $300 apiece to replace a temporary jack with the permanent support meaning I can usually do a whole basement for under $3000 which is much much much less expensive than adding I Beams.

@Andy Sabisch If you’re not required to wait till the 15th or so to file paperwork I would start the process on the 4th, the first day after the grace period.

I’ve found with several of my tenants once they get well into the eviction process they “find the money” and aren’t late again for a long while.

In my state if you have to file the paperwork 3 times in a year you can proceed with the eviction regardless of what happens next.

Figure out if your state has something like this and get rid of them.

@Kwanza P. I’ve paid personally $650 for my own 3/3 but we usually budget $125-180 for our 1-2 bedroom units with lesser known cleaners. For something as big as a 4/5 id expect to pay $500+.

I’ve been paying my WONDERFUL handyman about $50/hr. Based on a flat rate fee. I feel there’s months he makes out and there’s months I make out.

For the record we’re not in the same page and he believes he’s being paid $30/hr and has asked for a raise based on the months where there’s more work.

@Rene Hosman on my last deal I wish I’d have had a little more money towards a higher down payment so I could have used a different lending source.

I've been using my local bank which has been fine but I feel the rate I got was higher than I might have gotten with a DSCR. Unfortunately the location is considered rural as it's a small town and the DSCR lenders I spoke with required 35% down which I did not have.

@Zhenyang Jin I have one Amazon account and pay with different credit cards.

@Oliver Martinez I’ve house hacked for 28 years. For the first 23 renting rooms in my house and for the last five living in one side of a duplex.

My tenants have always known I’m the owner and it’s never been an issue. In fact, all my tenants in all my properties know I’m the owner and it’s never been an issue.

I have always maintained separate accounts for my properties. It can be a tax issue if you commingle funds. I believe your account can be frozen by the IRS if they start investigating you or auditing you if you’ve commingled funds.

I actually keep a separate account for each property which adds a little to my bookkeeping but gives me an instant snapshot of what’s going on with each individual property.

Some investors like separate accounts and some like one operating account for all their properties. It’s a personal preference.

@Ellen Feiss If you have a rental it just goes without saying that the floors are going to see wear and tear and damage.

If you’re overly attached to a rental or a feature of it you’re going to have a much harder and more stressful time as a landlord.

I have super nice rentals, some of which have hard wood floors. They’re just a business to me and if they ever get damaged I’ll worry about it then.

I think it would be super weird to try to require someone to use rugs.