All Forum Posts by: Benoni Cole

I am having the hardest time finding a duplex to house hack in the Allentown Lehigh Valley area. I made the decision to get into investing by starting out with a house hack but I only qualify for FHA financing due to having fair, but not bad credit and a higher debt to income ratio. I paid what little remained of my car loan off to help my DTI but it was not enough to move the needle too much and I cannot pay off or down anymore debt. As it stands I qualify about a 275k mortgage and what I am finding is that most of the duplexes in my area are around 300-325k. The ones in my price range either go so fast you don't have time to react (cash deals, hard money investors )or they don't take FHA financing so I'm forced to either try to convince them or sit on the sidelines while it gets sold elsewhere. I've started pitching the fact that I would be willing to do a 203k loan with the financing so the seller doesn't have to worry much about post inspection repairs but that's something new I've started doing. I've also started shifting my focus from just looking MLS to looking for off market deals via real estate groups on facebook and sending "interest to buy" letters people that have purchased a duplex within the last 5 years based on Redfin data I can utilize. Does anyone have any other suggestions or strategies on how to create buying opportunities for a small multi family with FHA financing? I've been at this for about a month and a half. I've only had 1 showing and 1 open house visit.