All Forum Posts by: Lucas Hammer

I've always been a fan of Albany Park myself, but I moved down south once it got outside my price range. A lot of the north side is just crazy expensive right now and property taxes up there are a nightmare. 

Thanks for the replies everyone. Think I'm going to hold off on a second home in the Denver area for now until things get settled with the various governments. Everything seems like a moving target unless you want a long-term rental, which, if I bought, I'd want to use the property for myself, but not all the time.

I've been house-hacking a 2-flat in Chicago for the last few years and for personal reasons, we're looking to buy a SFH for our primary residence and start investing separately. Are 5% down payment loans typically reserved for first-time homebuyers? We've already started looking at properties for ourselves so we can rent out the unit we're living in. The reason I'm asking here instead of applying elsewhere is we're doing a Title 1 Loan right now on our 2-flat to get a bunch of **** done here right before we move so it'll be easier to rent out.

Our credit is great (high 700s) and I have a decent-paying job with 6 years of job history. Having never had a conventional mortgage and only having an FHA for low-down-payment, I guess I"m not sure what to expect and I don't want to fill out an application while we're getting a reno loan.

Hi, so far I'm going city by city looking to find out if anywhere in the Denver area allows non-primary homes to be rented out as AirBNBs. I saw that Aurora, Golden, Denver, Lakewood and Englewood (although they're discussing it) pretty much don't allow STRs unless it's your primary residence. Is there anywhere near there that allows it?

So I'm going to need both metal and wood fencing at my house. We're having a garage torn down that's on the property line with my neighbor, so I will need a wood picket fence on one end and a metal fence on the alley side. Any recommendations for an affordable fencing contractor that can tackle both?

@Tiffiny John I'd be interested to see the numbers on the Harvard duplexes.

Fair point. The two units are already separated, but one unit is paying all of the laundry room costs and the other is paying all of the common area lighting costs, so that's where I was wondering if a third meter would be worth it. It easily won't be, but I'm just comparing all my options for how to handle the property when I move out of one of the units (hopefully soon).

So I have a two flat, but it has common stairways and a laundry room. Will ComEd add a meter that I can have an electrician just wire to those areas even if it doesn't directly correspond to a unit? We'd be looking at adding a third meter that we'd pay so the tenants wouldn't be responsible for the common areas at all.

If possible, has anyone done this or have an estimate of the cost to see if it's worth it?

Thanks @Chris Mason! That actually sounds great to us because we'd want to keep availability for ourselves anyway.

@Chris Mason Thanks for the info. So would exclusive control eliminate AirBNB as an option too? I'll be getting a large bonus from work in a few months that'll put my LTV well below 80% and can refinance then into a standard conventional loan, but I'm trying to figure out if I can make some money to cover the mortgage until then.