All Forum Posts by: Grant P.

As someone who grew up in Dayton this is news I'm really excited to hear!

Hi @Daniel Amsalem, Thanks for sharing your thoughts and how you've worked around the HCOL in the area. Your numbers sound great and with just a basement pulling in $2000 that gives me some confidence if I try to be particular on the location, especially close to the metro while being accessible by public transit to the nearby university. Our timelines seem pretty similar as well. Good luck with your next property!

Thanks @Mike Klarman

If their lease is up at the end of June and the security deposit is in my possession, then my biggest concern would be having the property ready for whoever will reside in the property after them. I would only show leniency if they can prove their new living arrangements after next month. 

@Gildas Dossa I've done a TSP loan for both properties I've acquired since joining the federal service. I think it's a great way to accelerate having a down payment, but you might be best keeping it exclusively for something you'll use as your primary residence and house hack. Waiting to have some savings for maintenance and closing costs would also be a good idea. In general, I made sure that I had 5k-10k leftover from the loan combined with my savings to make sure I was prepared for any surprises.

Also make sure you're confident that you'll stick with federal service, as leaving will force repayment of the loan, and not paying will cost a lot in taxes and fees. 

Hey @Nick Riccio thank you for your kind words and for sharing the similarities to your situation and strategies of how you've adapted to your market. I agree that appreciation shouldn't be the core justification for any investment, but moreso anticipating that rents will reach the level necessary to cashflow the entire house rather than relying on renting by the room. 

If I may ask, for your value-add projects, did you go a hard money lending route and then refinance out to a conventional mortgage to accomplish that? 

That's funny how similar these things turn out. My Fiance's mother is currently in the states working but plans to frequently travel back and forth between here and the Philippines. Thanks for feeling comfortable bringing me into the group you organize. I hope to learn a lot from the members there as I focus more on what my goals are for real estate as I plan for the future. 

Hi Joaquin, thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and give your thoughts too. I'm glad that my gut is showing me that it's unrealistic to attempt such a feat of one home a year in this market and environment. 

When I moved to Virginia after high school I lived out in Springfield until it was time to start house hacking. I feel very fortunate that the two properties I have already can cash flow as an entire home when the time comes. While I do own now and can stay in my current living situation for longer, my fiance and I want to move forward and own a property together, so she'll really appreciate your opinion that it might be best to stick with one property for a longer period of time, rather than trying to scale for one home a year. 

It's also funny you mentioned looking into second homes an hour or two away, as last weekend we toured a model home in Potomac Shores that we feel would be perfect for us for the long term, but not necessarily in line with our investment goals in the short term. 

Short term we were hoping to scale around homes accessible without a car to George Mason University. We're both incredibly bullish on the future rents and appreciation of our area, but it could be a lot of work and capital to accomplish. 

Long term it's great because we lock down a wonderful property in a location we both love, with a basement that lends itself well to rent separately if needed. We anticipate my future mother-in-law will be between the US and her home country when she retires, so having that option appeals to us. Not necessarily an investment as much as a preferential living condition. 

We still have some time to do as you suggest, wait and see with the market. I notice more and more listings in our zip code as the days go by, so maybe that will lead to some deals. Otherwise, reading that makes me consider looking into the community we visited. 

Thanks!

P.S. Since you are local, do you happen to know any Northern Virginia-specific REI groups? Most of what I can find is for the entire state.

I've partnered with a friend of mine for a house hack. I would say that while things are going fine, there are times that our expectations can clash simply due to us not taking the time to lay those out ahead of time. For example: I went into this with previous experience managing my first property and offered the partnership for him thinking that there will be less risk and work will be split and less for me. However, I found that all decisions in the management that I didn't bring to him first caused stress and he expected to be in the loop on every decision and he wants to run by his responsibilities with me as well. What I thought would be less work and more delegated tasks became twice as much work for both of us. Since this is a house hack, I feel as though many of these issues are exacerbated due to us being roommates, and once we separate the business from our residence things will run more smoothly. 

I for sure still would have done the deal in hindsight. All I would change is having more upfront communications on the expectations of us as individuals in the partnership. Family can make things stressful though, and there might be a time in the future where your mom will want to cash out her equity for retirement or plans change or anything like that. Bruce is also making a good suggestion to borrow the money instead. 

Hi everyone, I thought about submitting this question to the podcast, but I wanted to post it here first to see what people here thought. 

The location wasn't available from the drop-down menu, but it's Northern Virginia, Fairfax.

I'm currently a fresh investor planning to scale and located in the Northern Virginia region. My current properties include a townhome on the further edge of the Virginia side of the DC metropolitan area, which my father rents out, and I break even on in terms of income from his lease. My only other property is a free-standing single-family home bought with a friend and where I currently live now. Both of these properties started as house hacks, and I'm confident that both will cash flow modestly and appreciate to a larger degree as time goes on. These results were due to good fortune in finding and negotiating a good deal and locking in a low rate early enough to keep my monthly payments as low as possible. I'm in the process of appreciating out of the PMI on my first townhome/father's residence.

I know that David recommends that, at the minimum, a real estate investor should prioritize accumulating a property every year through house hacking. I shared this mindset back in 2019 when I bought my first one and proceeded to buy another 18 months later. As a result, my fiance and I are on board buying single-family homes like the one I'm in now and in the same general location. However, due to rising rates on top of higher prices, I'm concerned about exit strategies when the time comes for my fiance and me to move on to our next next house hack (the next house hack after the one we plan to buy this year), as the monthly payment cannot cashflow positively by renting out the whole house. The solution I have in my head is to continue to rent by the room. While I wouldn't describe my area as a "college town", we live near the state's largest college in terms of the student body, with most being commuters who will need the kind of housing we're looking to own and provide. However, is this a sustainable scaling solution? I don't mind putting in room-by-room management to both cash flow and scale in this high-demand area; however, buying one house hack a year is probably the most we can do at our current incomes. 

I've heard David stress that people shouldn't emphasize cash flow as much in today's market, and the market I'm in, I feel, embodies that philosophy. Future rent increase potential and appreciation will be incredibly powerful in this DC metro area, with the university accessible even without a car. 

Now on to my questions:

1. Should I continue with my plan to house hack one new property a year even if I won't be able to lease the entire house for positive cash flow and be forced to rent by the room to sustain operations?

2. Is there a point where these management plans become an unprofitable, time-consuming activity that might hold me back from future opportunities? 

3. Finally, from the picture I painted of my local market, would it be better for my fiance and I instead focus on getting a property to house hack with plans to reside in long-term? After which, we'd use those savings to prioritize other forms of real estate investing, such as BRRRR, STR, and long-distance buy-and-hold.