All Forum Posts by: Shazia Chiu

Spacious side-by-side duplex for sale in a desirable part of Holladay! The home is in a quiet neighborhood with excellent schools and easy access to I-215 and I-15. Downtown Salt Lake City is less than 20 minutes away, and Sugarhouse, one of Utah's trendiest neighborhoods, is right next door. The area is filled with tree-lined streets and luxury homes. Each unit of the duplex has been remodeled recently and features an updated kitchen, three large bedrooms, one remodeled bathroom, a spacious living room and a laundry room. Each unit also features its own private driveway parking, fenced backyard and storage shed. 

Unit 2170 is rented out at $1350/mo., but the tenants will be moving out mid-August. 2168 is vacant and was updated earlier this year. Research indicates market rents for similar properties in this area are $1500+ (buyer should verify). 

This is currently the most affordable property on the market in this neighborhood--don't miss your chance to be an owner occupant or the owner of a cash-flow-positive investment property. Square footage figures are provided as a courtesy estimate only and were obtained from public records. Buyer to verify all. 

2168 Interior: 

2170 Interior: 

My husband and I own several new build townhomes in Orem and Herriman. We bought them a couple years back and the appreciation has definitely been the biggest benefit. Our older multi-families in Utah have been way better investments for us in terms of cash flow (which is what we're after).

Now we've started investing out-of-state, so we're entertaining the idea of selling the townhomes and using the proceeds to acquire more units elsewhere. I think the new builds can still be good investments, but I don't see them as a huge cash flow play in our market unless you're able to build a portfolio with quite a few of them. They are pretty easy to manage though, and that's always nice! 

Shawn Ackerman is a very helpful resource for that area 😊

This is a great topic. Generally my husband and I shoot for 6 months of mortgage reserves for each property, and between our liquid accounts+retirement accounts we normally will have at least that much available. But it ebbs and flows; for example we're a bit cash low at the moment because of buying property and a business at the same time. So now we need to take some time to build our reserves back up, especially since I'm adamant about sticking to that 6 month figure! Personally, I'm quite conservative so I like to have a year's worth of living expenses saved up outside of the property reserves. We've also made up a "bare bones budget", which is a budget that we could revert to if we needed to seriously cut back our expenses. I'm all about saving and planning when it comes to finances!

I went to a miniature version of Gene Guarino's ALF training today. It is super interesting to me and I'd love to get into it, but I feel overwhelmed with the amount of information that I need to learn! I honestly can't find much about this on the internet and many RE investors seem unfamiliar with it. I'd love to learn more from people who are already in the business and to network with others who are interested in ALFs.

I have a couple of questions: is the RCFE cert required for an investor who would want to own an ALF but not run the business (i.e., someone who would want to hire a licensed administrator to handle the business side of things?) I live in Utah, if that makes a difference. 

Also, it looks like Gene Guarino is giving a 5-hour workshop in my city this weekend. I've been intrigued to learn more about ALFs, but I wonder if the workshop will go beyond the basics, or if it'll only be an introduction to ALFs. Would love to hear experiences if anyone here has attended his 5-hour workshop! 

Thanks in advance :) 

Haha and by "not crazy" I mean that it sounds like you're doing the right thing by looking into getting a house. For some reason I had it in my head that your title was something along the lines of "am I crazy for considering this"

Not crazy! My husband and I have seven rentals and I'm 24. Getting into real estate investing has been one of the best decisions I've made, even with the ups and downs.

You can run a multifamily search on UtahRealEstate.com to see duplexes that are on the market. You can also drill down to see duplexes in particular areas, in a certain price range, etc.

Stephanie Foster yay welcome to Utah in the near future!! This is the greatest state ever (although Alaska is quite rad as well). :) My husband and I have a couple of multi-family properties; one is in Provo and the other is in Salt Lake City. The SLC property is a fourplex is a C-class neighborhood about 10 mins from downtown. I agree with what everyone else has said here, Ogden has some good deals but a lot of the properties up there seem to fall into the 'distressed' category. In SLC, there are options but prices are higher. I'm an agent and I've been working with a buyer to find an investment property in SLC; it took us some time to find a good SF home in the $200k-$230k range because of the competitive market. As far as multi-fams go in this area, we are always watching out for fourplexes, and the prices I've seen are between $380k-$440k in recent months. Let me know if you have any questions. It'd be cool to meet up once you're here!