All Forum Posts by: Jeremy Taggart

@Nathan Jackson Pittsburgh is a great market for house hacking. I've done it here 7 times myself. You can still buy a 3-4 unit in a decent area with a 3.5-5% down mortgage and live for free and sometimes even make money while living there. I always recommend getting the full sellers assist to limit your out of pocket cost. Mckeesport and Middle Hill can be a bit gritty as far as living there goes, Coraopolis is generally solid and a great up and coming neighborhood that I am a fan of given it's location right where multiple major highways meet and close proximity to downtown and the airport. 

I probably wouldn't house hack in Oil City since you likely won't really see much appreciation or rent growth long term there being so far from the major job centers here. I tend to prefer going for 3-4 units in nicer ish areas on the house hacks since 3.5-5% down of say $500k isn't really that much more than 3.5-5% down of $200k from an absolute dollar amount but you get so much more wealth creation with the $500k property. 

@Radovan Matusovich congrats on the first purchase! I think Westwood is still an undervalued neighborhood here. Little bit slept on. Great quiet residential neighborhood in the city.

If you want to continue to invest in Pittsburgh with $200k that's plenty to work with. I would probably get into single family BRRRR deals or house flips, with the eventual goal to turn that equity into down payments for multi family that you can buy and hold long term. If you want something a little more turnkey I tend to prefer just buying multi family from the start here since they have better rent/price ratios compared to single family homes. Single family are good for doing value add though and getting chunks of equity with especially when you have a lump sum like that to deploy. Just have to be okay with the rehab side of things but the opportunity is there with all the old run down houses we have waiting to be fixed up.

@Steven Le Yessir it's a great market. Price points, neighborhoods, and property types that work for really any strategy so you can diversify your portfolio within the same market which is nice. I've been investing here since 2016. 

Yeah that one's pricey for Brookline. They are being a bit too ambitious with the asking price. You can still manage to hit the 1% rule in Brookline (not sure how much longer this will last) so wouldn't make sense to dip much below that right now there IMO. I am a fan of the neighborhood though solid B class area close to downtown and has a walkable business district.  

@Chris Mclaughlin Pittsburgh is cool. Good supply of multis ranging from about 60-125k/unit depending on bedroom counts and quality of the building/area. 1-1.5% rent/price ratios in decent neighborhoods for turnkey/close to turnkey. Can get above 1.5% but probably not in areas I would recommend being out of state having to rely on third party management. We just helped an out of state client buy a nice brick 4plex with 2BR units renting at $900 each for $250k to give you an idea of what would be considered a solid cash flow deal here. That was in a nicer pocket of a C class neighborhood. 

@Ben Schein you'll never be able to spreadsheet neighborhoods or zip codes in PIttsburgh like that. The only way to get that deep of knowledge is getting it from someone that knows the area like the back of their hand and has been on the streets for years in the local market. Zip codes (and even specific neighborhoods) can encompass A class all the way to D class within the same borders. 

It's very nuanced here which makes it nearly impossible to do that off the cusp. That being said, there are a ton of opportunities because of that. If you can buy in the nicer pockets of neighborhoods that people write off completely you can get B class tenants/properties at C class neighborhood prices. Or you can get in the path of progress knowing which sections are just about to blow up as a result of the street by street/block by block nature of the area. I would probably focus more on building those relationships in whatever market you pick unless you can find a more cookie cutter market, but I doubt any of those markets will be like that.

@Sharon McCants $58,500 value seems low for that amount of rent. I feel like you are probably higher on that now. How many bedrooms is this house and where is it located?

Idk if you are wanting to purchase any more, but you could likely use that first one to combine on the same loan with another one and use the equity as the "down payment" to get you to a higher loan amount and give you more options.

There are some local lenders here that can likely lend on it though regardless under 100k I could refer you to. Just sometimes doesn't make a ton of sense to do loans under 100k since the fees are a much larger % of the loan amount compared to higher loan amounts it's almost doesn't make it worth it in a lot of cases. 

@Michael Shenouda you can take a 401k loan of up to $50,000. That's enough to do a flip or BRRRR in the Pittsburgh market if you are borrowing hard money for the rest. You pay the retirement account the interest so essentially are paying interest to yourself.

I have also used 0% interest for 12-14 month credit cards as well to pay for rehabs to limit the amount I had to bring out of pocket. Then pay the credit card off at the refi or sale of the flip. Pretty sure the first business card I got using that strategy the credit limit was like $50-$60k.

Other option is if you have any Roth accounts, you can pull the contributions out tax/penalty free.

Just some ways you might not have thought of that I know could be options without paying the penalty on the retirement accounts.

Outside of that I would focus on finding good deals. If you can find a really good deal it will make it much easier to get a partner/money on it. 

@Steven Le just gotta make sure you are working with people that know the area inside and out. They are your eyes and ears when you are investing out of state. Ideally someone with years of boots on the ground area knowledge that knows the neighborhoods down to a street level. Visiting helps give you a good general overall feel of the area on a high level though for sure. 

@Steven Le I tend to prefer B class areas for out of state investors just because you are relying on third party property management. It will greatly reduce the risk of the property not performing. You tend to just have to wait a bit to get significant cash flow from them. I also like nice pockets of C class areas since you can get some of the same benefits of class B, but better rent/price ratios in a lot of cases. You really have to know the area you are buying in though to succeed with this strategy. Can never go wrong with a little value add as well if you have a contractor you can trust.