All Forum Posts by: Daniel Haberkost

@Leonard Sanford Jr you should be excited, once you cover all your expenses with passive income the freedom you have is incredible and this is a step in that direction.

My house hack tenants pay me with Venmo but I use Zillow’s system on my normal rentals. From what I hear, Cozy is similar.

In the future I’ll likely use Zillow for my house hack tenants too, it’s very convenient.

 I just commented on your other post asking how finding roommates was going! I've been house hacking for several years and you can certainly rent to friends you just have to be sure that they understand they will be held to the same standards as anyone else. 

Make sure you screen your tenants like you would anyone else, background/credit check, call their employer/previous landlords, etc. Don't accept sob stories!

Aside from traditional screening, remember you're living in the house with these people so you need to set clear standards. For me, I tell all (house hack) tenants that the kitchen stays clean, no loud noise at night and pay me by the first every month. Think about what's important to you and set clear expectations with them. 

If you take the time upfront to screen your tenants properly, it's amazing how painless house hacking can be. 

@Leonard Sanford Jr House hacking is such an impactful way to get such started, your savings rate will dramatically increase. Have you been able to find tenants? 

Where are you looking to go from here with RE?

Would you be able to do both and start with a house hack? Buy a small multifamily, live in one unit and rent out the others?

It's an extremely impactful way to get started as you get your first property under your belt and accelerate your savings rate dramatically. 

@Bobby Wenger house hacking is an excellent way to start. Although being in an expensive market makes it hard to find the right property, once you do it’s very easy to find & keep good tenants.

I’ve been house hacking for years down here in The Springs and I’ve had NEGATIVE vacancy, strong rents and great tenants.

There’s no reason you can’t create the same situation for yourself.

@Francois Guerrier from a purely pragmatic, numbers-oriented position where your only goal is to maximize returns, I don’t think it makes much sense (assuming you have an appropriate amount of liquid reserves).

But as you can see from many of the previous comments, there are quite a few personal/emotional reasons to buy with cash. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

IMO, it’s important to balance pragmatism with the individual/emotional side of things as well.

@Steven Cobb I want to second @Cameron Tope. People post about wanting to become wholesalers because they read that it requires little to no money but it’s one of the hardest ways to get started. Do you have sales/marketing experience?

I’m looking for off-market properties myself and was told to “die in a fire” last week for sending someone a fairly innocuous post card. That sort of thing doesn’t bother me because I’ve always been in sales, but are you okay with it?

Do you know how to quickly/accurately run comps? Will you be able to speak confidently to potential cash buyers about the property?

Building a real wholesale business takes A LOT of time, effort and rejection. No way around it.

@Priyaa Kalyanaraman there really aren’t any bad areas in town but the zip codes I like (for many different reasons) are 80917/80918/80909/80907/80915.

A lot of people will talk about the desirability & future potential of 80903/80904/80905 (and there’s a lot going on in those areas) but I really don’t like the tenant base and the older houses. Too many issues that I don’t want to deal with however, there’s lots of potential there as well.

 Hi Priyaa, 

I can comment on CO Springs. Throughout the pandemic, prices continued to go up, even during the lock down as demand greatly outweighs supply here. 

Even wholesale deals go for ridiculous prices near market value. I made offers on several (off market) houses in the middle of the shutdown and was outbid by a substantial margin. 

People/businesses are moving here in droves (Amazon is building a huge facility by the airport, In & Out Burger is building their headquarters here and opening their first location in CO here, etc) so there's massive competition for residential real estate. 

Owning rentals here is great because the vacancy rate is next to nothing and once acquired you should have it rented in days, even if it's not in perfect condition. It's tough, but deals can be made (not found) here and I'm (in the long run) very bullish on CO Springs. 

Similar situations exist in Denver/Boulder although from what I've read it's most extreme here in The Springs.  

Hope that helps!

-Dan

@Patricia Yang I think that’s a viable idea, a lot of people I know would use that if it wasn’t too expensive.