All Forum Posts by: Miller McSwain

I was in a similar situation in Colorado. In our case, the multifamilies were just too expensive and didn't cash flow if each unit was rented traditionally.

INSTEAD, we ended up purchasing a SFH and renting out the rooms. We actually almost hit the 1% rule when we move out (which is basically impossible in our market). We purchased for $460k and we are building a 6th bedroom right now. Currently, our room sour renting for ~$750/room, so when we move out that will be $4500/month! On a traditional lease, this house would probably rent for $1800/month, so definitely consider rent-by-room, STR, or MTR on a SFH!

I'm not exactly sure what your strategy is, but we had similar concerns and have found ways to do these tasks remotely.

We are renting by the room, and we didn't want to have to go to the property for showings, move-in/out inspections. For showings, all of our tenants have actually signed sight-unseen because we post a video walkthrough of the property; however, I'm sure someone will want to walk through physically at some point. In this case, I know a rent-by-room investor who just gets one of the other housemates to show them around, so that is probably what we will do.

We have a cleaner clean our property once per month. This is ~$130/month and just ensures that each bedroom/property is ready to be listed as soon as a tenant moves out because it is always clean! We just have her make video recordings of the unit before and after a new tenant moves in. I've also heard of folks having the outgoing tenant record a video of the unit condition and have the incoming tenant record a video of the unit condition. You could compare the two videos and perhaps make security deposit deductions if needed.

So in short, if you are renting by room, the other roommates can probably do some of this lifting. If you aren't doing rent by room, perhaps having a cleaner/handyman do some of the work could help!

There are probably a lot of good ones, but this is working for us:

We are using the "rent-by-room" strategy, and we put electronic locks on all bedroom doors and the front door. Our locks allow us to remotely add a pin for a new resident, make temporary pins for handymen/contractors, etc.

We looked for any lock that uses the "TTlock" app on Amazon. That way, all of our locks are in the same app and have the same functionality.

For exterior deadbolt locks (front door, garage door), we used this:
https://a.co/d/2SFMNcy

For normal interior locks (bedroom), we used something like this (the ones we have are currently unavailable, but this has similar capabilities):
https://a.co/d/8C6nYen

You can create codes from anywhere without the locks having internet connection because it can create them using an offline algorithm. But if you want to create specific codes with certain digits (instead of random), you either need to be close enough to the lock to use bluetooth or you need to have a gateway. The gateway is just a hub that all the locks connect to.

We are using this one, but there are other options:
https://a.co/d/0kEUCXv

I'm currently house hacking (rent-by-room), and we have had no issues filling our units. We've had 2 turnovers so far, with 0 vacancy (new tenant moved in the day the previous moved out). We do list our units on a lot of sites though to ensure we get lots of interest.

Like I said, we only have experience with rent-by-room, but I'll list some sites for other strategies too 😊

Traditional Long Term Rental:
- Zillow
- Realtor.com
- Hotpads
- FB Marketplace
- FB Groups
- Apartments.com
- Craigslist

Rent-by-room Rental:
- FB Marketplace
- FB Groups
- Zillow
- Roomies.com
- Roomiapp.com
- Roomster.com

Short-Term-Rental:
- Airbnb
- VRBO
- Flip Key
- Booking.com

Medium-Term Rental:
- Furnished Finders
- Kopa.co
- Airbnb (with 30 day minimum stay)

 I don't think it is your only option. There are probably a handful of other options that I'm just unaware of. Definitely talk to some lenders, they obviously will have the best answers. 

But yeah, you should totally be able to refinance upon graduation and take the co-signed off the loan 👍

When our tenants notify us that they are moving out, we send them an "Acknowledgment of Notice to Vacate". It just says that we acknowledge the date they are moving out, and it provides move-out instructions. So perhaps sending something like this or having them sign and send a "Notice to Vacate" would be a good idea to make things official.

I just graduated, and I was able to close a month before graduation by showing my lender my offer letter. If you aren't close to graduation, you may have some options although I haven't proven them:
1. Have someone with sufficient income co-sign (parent, etc). If someone else is on the mortgage that has qualifiable income, I imagine the lender would be willing to accept that. Perhaps you can incentivize a parent by offering a percentage of cash flow, equity, etc.
2. Like you mentioned, DSCR could be a good route since they don't scrutinize over your personal finances as much as conventional. I think DSCR requires 20%+ downpayment typically though. Conventional/FHA would allow 5% or less. So perhaps look into that though.

Here are a couple of potential solutions that may help with some of your issues.

We are currently rent-by-room renting a house. So it is a single-family with multiple tenants on individual leases. One furnace, one electric bill, one water bill is billed to the whole property.
To make things easy, we just pay for utilities. That way tenants don't have issues with each other for someone using more water etc.
So to do this, we either raised the rent to help cover utilities, or we just added a flat utility fee to the lease (effectively just raising the rent). Perhaps this could be a simple solution for you rather than trying to split or bill utilities back?

As far as allowing both units to control the temperature. Perhaps you could get a smart thermostat, and you could put the physical thermostat in 1 unit and have a wireless controller in another. Surely these exist since I can control our thermostat from my phone/smart speaker. This may cause both units to continually change the thermostat setpoint, but they would both have access to controlling it.

 I haven't used the maintenance feature, that is just what tempted me to make the switch. I'm still interested in switching if RentRedi can address the issues I mentioned.
I just looked though, and the maintenance coordination costs $25/month and $12/property.
Then, they will handle all maintenance calls, hire someone to address the issue, and bill you for labor+materials 👍

We are in a very similar situation!
We have a 5 bed 3 bath house (3/2 on main level, 2/1 in basement). We are living in the basement and renting out the main level rooms individually.

Some things to consider:
1. Renting out a portion of the house as rent-by-room, medium-term, or short-term can offer increased income over renting it as a traditional long-term. For example, when we move out of this house in a few months and rent each bedroom individually, we will get $3750/month in rent while we would only get ~$1800/month if we rented the house to a single renter. (We actually plan to add another bedroom soon, then it will bring in $4500/month)
2. Try to separate the main level and basement while you live there. In our house, you can enter the house from the garage, then have immediate access to the basement stairs. So we added an interior door that allows us to access the basement from the garage without entering the tenants' area on the main level. So it is basically like we have our own place!
3. Think about laundry. In our case, laundry is in the basement, so tenants do have to come into our unit to do laundry. To prevent giving them 24/7 access to our unit, we installed an electronic lock that unlocks during each tenant's "laundry window". This is a 3 hour, weekly window that the tenants choose.

I was on a podcast where I discuss lots of details about our house-hack. If you are interested, you can find it in the link below 😊