All Forum Posts by: Alex Lunsford

@John Mayer thank you for the insight on your situation,

That sounds like an ideal house hack, with a significant amount of cashflow. That's pretty awesome, The house my agent is putting in an offer for is about 45 minutes from downtown Houston. The tricky part about Houston (greater Houston area) though is that there are so many sub cities surrounding the main city that everything kind of blends together it feels like.

So that being said the home I'm going for is a 3/2 in a quieter area, and I'm definitely going to try my hand at renting out the master bedroom with the private bath and see how that works or if it ever even gets occupied. If not I'm going to maybe gear towards the garage studio route. When I toured the property it looked like the owners before had duct work ran supplying A/C to the garage, and it's all sheet rocked which tells me they may have intended on converting it and just didn't follow through.

I'm really hoping despite the area though I could get a tenant or two for room rentals.                                                               If you don't mind, what are your thoughts on my approaches? 

@James Carlson absolutely, I definitely find myself in that position at 26 to be able to house hack by the room if it makes sense in the area. The couple you mentioned in the link did a great job on that remodel, that's a nice property!

@Daniel Haberkost, I appreciate the information you shared, and linked! I read through it and definitely had a few take away points for getting started with having tenants in a shared space.

@Twana Rasoul and @Ridge Tullos

I don't think my lender is accounting for the rental unit of the duplex, so I'll definitely dig more into that.

Thank you!

@Holly Brown Thank you!

Thank you @Ridge Tullos, @Mark H. Porter and @Twana Rasoul for the suggestions,

So I was actually looking into multi family properties with my agent, specifically duplexes. The only issue I continued running across was that my pre-approval amount wasn't quite enough to buy a multi family right off the bat especially since I'm taking advantage of the VA loan to get into my first property. Which led me to look at other avenues to approach the house hack.

Hi @Jonathan Greene

Thank you for the information, and taking note especially for how difficult a rent by the room approach may be, tells me that i would definitely need to change my home search to more of the college housing areas and neighborhoods surrounding as Holly mentioned. 

The primary reason I was looking to do the rent by the room approach is that as far as personal space goes it's not a huge concern of mine to sacrifice some comfort for a year while I have to live at the residence. Also with the SFH I have it narrowed to a decent neighborhood that shows promise in the future as a buy and hold, that way I could rent to a family down the road. However, given the very helpful information you've provided I'm thinking that the garage apartment idea @Holly Brown gave would definitely be the approach to take, in this scenario.

Hey @Holly Brown, thank you for the insight.

I haven't purchased the property yet, but I have my search narrowed down to three properties in different areas of the city that I'm working with my agent on. With your SFH did you purchase the property with the garage apartment already converted, or was that something you did yourself after the purchase?

I'm coming up on my first property purchase, where I'll be the primary resident of a single family home. I'm getting my start in the Houston, TX market, and was wondering what advice or experiences some of you may have had with house hacking a single family home in Houston. As in the demand for rooms to rent in a single family home, how long the room would sit before rented, etc.

Any and all advice are much appreciated!

I'm coming up on my first property purchase, where I'll be the primary resident of a single family home. I'm getting my start in the Houston, TX market, and was wondering what advice or experiences some of you may have had with house hacking a single family home in Houston. As in the demand for rooms to rent in a single family home, how long the room would sit before rented, etc.

Any and all advice are much appreciated!