All Forum Posts by: Samantha Magina

I’m curious as well, I just had some marketing material returned as vacant property with no forwarding address at a property where the owner passed last month.

I missed the boat on this opportunity myself, but saw others do it in college. I'd suggest getting the loan in a parent or relative's name and have an agreement with them to split the appreciation/ income. It'd help if you could come up with a part time job, sidehistle or summer job that puts some cash in the bank so that you could contribute toward the down payment and perhaps have a month or two of mortgage saved. Parents may be convinced to help invest if they are already covering the cost of your dorm. Compare the cost of the dorm to the 3.5% down payment of an FHA loan, to see if the acquisition could actually save them money in the short term. Another option would be to do a letter writing campaign or otherwise approach owners about seller financing , where the seller carries the mortgage loan, so they might overlook your lack of income if your parents are game to co-sign.

Look into the house hacking books and articles. College is a great time to buy a 4 bed /2 bath house, and rent out 3 of the rooms to fellow students.

Anecdotal, but I was the impatient tenant many years ago. I was already in contract to buy a house and foolishly started “browsing” petfinder for dogs. Found two basset hounds begged my landlord to temporarily wave the “no pets” rule. She agreed but also assured me any damage would come from the security deposit. It ended up costing us the carpet cleaning fee for the only carpet in the unit. Possible option would be add a clause to the lease requiring pet rent, pet deposit and they pay for carpet cleaning / house cleaning fee upon move out?

I believe BP has a pretty active marketplace for deals as well. 

Have you considered NH at all? I don't work in that area, but I do a general search once in a while and the prices in southern NH just over the border seem to lend themselves better to house hacking if you work in the North Shore. 

Mark, I sent you an email. I love the Financial District and spent many years right down the street at 125 High St. You are probably going to want to focus your search either in the Boston area easily accessed by the subway or look south of Boston as the main commuter rail hub South Station is  a stop for all train lines south of the city. Anything North of the city goes to North station so you'd have to change trains or walk a decent distance to get to work. 

Also, welcome to Boston!

Where is the FEMA office building located? What kind of time commute do you want? Do you want to bike, drive or take the train (either commuter rail or subway)? As a longtime resident of Massachusetts I can’t stress enough how important it is to consider distance in time rather than miles.

Thanks for all the input everyone! I would put Foxboro in the B class rather than C class in regard to expenses and quality of tenants, as the whole town is a "great neighborhood". It's a good town, with good driving or train options into Boston. The property doesn't look to need any improvements in the short term. Units are all recently renovated, washer/dryers in unit, decent on-site amenities. I felt like it was overpriced but while I understand how to calculate what I want to offer on a much smaller (1-4 unit) property, I'm not sure how to back into the number that makes sense for larger properties, but working through all of the information provided in the responses and working on the definitions is certainly helping.